


A Wound in Time

by sahiya



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, OT3, PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-10
Updated: 2009-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:50:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Take one uneasy threesome, two inexplicably deserted ships, one immortal's mysterious past, and a rip in space and time. Shake well and step back quickly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my entry for the [Tardis Big Bang](http://tardisbigbang.com). It was not an easy story to write, and it would never have happened at all if not for my betas. Thank you to Kivrin and Fuzzyboo for cheerleading and line editing and letting me ramble at them for six solid months. Thank you to Antennapedia for 5k of commentary, helping me see the forest for the trees, and forcing me kill my darlings. The story is a thousand times better because of them; any mistakes are, of course, my own.
> 
> There is a piece of absolutely gorgeous artwork by Mita available [here](http://tardisbigbang.com/Round2/25-wound_cover.php).

It was after his death on Argot Station that Jack realized how wrong he'd been.

 

The death was an ugly one. Getting shot in the stomach was never a good way to go, and Jack knew he was unlikely to enjoy the aftermath either. He had the tendency to wake up as soon as his body was able to sustain consciousness, but before everything was back in its proper place. Getting shot in the head meant one hell of a migraine. Getting shot in the belly - with bullets that extruded nasty little blades, no less - meant several hours of extreme unpleasantness while his intestines squirmed themselves back into position.

 

Jack didn't think about that much at the time. He wasn't thinking about much at all beyond the pain, until he coughed and then he was thinking about the blood in his mouth and throat, choking him.

 

"Jack!" River was there, filling his field of vision. Jack turned his head, squinting to see if the guards who had shot him were still there or if they'd gone. "Jack, stay with me -"

 

"G' be okay," Jack managed. She'd only been with him and the Doctor a few months and she'd never seen him die. She knew he'd wake up again, they'd told her that right away, but she seemed to have forgotten. She was trying to staunch the bleeding with her bare hands.

 

Jack appreciated the effort, but it wasn't going to help. He coughed again. Knives of pain split apart his stomach and his mouth filled with blood. He gagged on it, unable to breathe. He tried to tell her again that it'd be okay, the Doctor would come for them soon, but all that came out was a desperate gargling noise. River's hands were covered in Jack's blood, and Jack was -

 

_Gone._

 

He woke up in the TARDIS medbay. The bright lights made his head ache, so he closed his eyes, listened to the comforting thrum and hum of the ship, and waited for the Doctor to notice he was awake. He'd obviously missed out on the rest of their misadventure, but he couldn't feel too sorry about it. It was just as unpleasant as he remembered, feeling his insides slip around.

 

Eventually the disorientation eased enough for Jack to sense that something was off. He blinked his eyes open, half-afraid he'd mistaken his location, but he hadn't. It was the TARDIS, only . . . no Doctor.

 

That was strange. The two of them had what almost amounted to a ritual for the aftermath of these adventures, the bad ones where Jack died. The Doctor took it hard, and after a few hundred years of playing fast and loose with his own skin, Jack had learned to avoid it if he could. Since rejoining the Doctor a couple decades earlier, he'd only died a few dozen times. But the hours after each of those times were etched into Jack's memory as some of the sweetest, most intimate moments of his long life.

 

Nothing could take away the pain of dying. But waking up warm and clean on the TARDIS to an extremely solicitous Doctor went some ways towards offsetting it. Jack was always freezing when he woke, his core temperature having dropped while he was dead. The Doctor didn't give off much body heat, but he'd tuck a self-heating blanket around Jack and crawl in beside him, wrapping him up in those wonderfully long, lanky limbs. Jack would fall asleep in his arms, and when he woke again they usually made love before taking the TARDIS to London for fish and chips.

 

For Jack to wake up without the Doctor waiting for him was very strange and a little alarming. More alarming was that he still wore the same blood-soaked shirt and trousers he'd died in. A blanket had been tossed over him, a bit haphazardly. Jack sat up and frowned at the empty medbay.

 

His initial fear, that something had happened to the Doctor, passed quickly enough. They were in the Vortex; River couldn't fly the TARDIS on her own, and the TARDIS's hum was normal, not the higher pitched frequency that meant she was frightened or upset. What would - _oh. Oh hell. River._

 

Jack had tried to take as much of the guards' ire as possible onto himself. Obviously he'd succeeded. Too well, in fact. Dead, he'd provided no protection. Who knew what they'd done to her once he was gone?

 

Jack threw off the blanket and went pelting out of the medbay. Or tried to; he stumbled immediately, a wave of dizziness and nausea crashing over him. Gagging, he lurched for the sink, where he vomited blood. It was just leftover from the internal bleeding before he'd died, but it was exhausting and painful, and his hands shook as he rinsed out his mouth. He leaned heavily on the sink and closed his eyes, imagining a strong arm sliding around his waist to hold him up and help him back to bed.

 

After a minute, Jack opened his eyes and started making his slow, wobbly way out of the medlab and down the hall to the room the Doctor and River had shared nightly for weeks now.

 

The door was ajar. Jack heard the Doctor murmuring in a low voice and stepped through to see the two of them curled up in the bed. River was dressed in pajamas and cradled in the Doctor's arms, eyes closed. She had a bandage taped across her forehead, a spot of bright red blood showing through. The Doctor kissed her temple and nuzzled her neck, and she sighed.

 

Jack swallowed.

 

The Doctor looked up. "Oh good, you're awake."

 

River's eyes opened to half-mast. "Jack," she said groggily.

 

"Hey, River," Jack said. "You all right?"

 

She nodded, then winced. "Mostly. How 'bout you? You," she interrupted herself with a yawn, "sorry. You look like hell."

 

Jack smiled wryly and leaned against the wall, attempting to look nonchalant and not as though he were about to fall over. "Thanks. I'm a bit sore and queasy, but I'll be okay." He was more than a bit sore and queasy, but he didn't want her sympathy. The Doctor, on the other hand, if he bothered asking . . .

 

He didn't. An awkward silence fell. River dozed; the Doctor seemed entirely preoccupied with watching her.

 

At last Jack cleared his throat. "Is she really okay?"

 

The Doctor looked up, wide-eyed as though he'd forgotten Jack was there. He nodded, but his mouth visibly tightened. "She had a nasty time of it. I treated her for shock, gave her something to help her sleep."

 

"But they didn't," Jack hesitated, "they didn't hurt her, did they?"

 

The Doctor frowned. "Her wrist is sprained and she has a lot of bruising. Mild concussion. I fixed what I could, and the rest will just take time. But anything more severe . . . no."

 

Jack exhaled in relief. It could have so easily been so much worse for her. All the same, this display of naked affection from the Doctor was weird. They'd had a bad day, but River could handle herself. It didn't really tell him why the Doctor had left him alone in the medlab.

 

And it didn't tell him why the invitation to get his ass into bed didn't seem to be forthcoming.

 

"I . . ." Jack began, then stopped. He'd woken up feeling as though he'd been slugged in the stomach and it was only getting worse. "I should shower," he said at last, lamely.

 

The Doctor nodded. "Get some sleep, all right? We'll do fish and chips once you're both up and about."

 

Jack suddenly felt very unsteady on his feet. "Right," he managed, and ducked out of the room, praying the Doctor hadn't seen his face. He didn't think he'd covered very well for how he really felt: shocked, shaken . . . abandoned. Jack didn't do jealousy, but it was hard not to feel cast aside when the Doctor hadn't even asked if he was all right.

 

River was mortal, Jack tried to remind himself as he stumbled down the hall to his own room. He'd probably been horribly frightened for her. He knew Jack would be okay.

 

Somehow, that didn't make him feel much better. He'd died, dammit, and the Doctor was the one who kept insisting he shouldn't just risk his life willy-nilly, that death was significant even if it wasn't permanent. Jack had been a bit bewildered at first, especially considering the Doctor's old attitude toward his immortality, but lately he'd started to believe him. The way the Doctor treated him each time he died . . . Jack had started to believe his life might really be a gift.

 

He was still reeling when he made it into the shower. He needed five minutes under the hottest spray he could stand to stop shaking, and then his stomach rolled again and he doubled over, heaving blood all over the tile. He leaned against the wall, willing a familiar hand to draw back the curtain and turn off the water.

 

It took him ten minutes to make it out of the shower. He fell into bed still damp and rolled himself up in the duvet, angrier now than he had been. When he woke up, Jack decided, all three of them were going to have a very serious discussion about the relationship configuration on this ship.

 

But when Jack woke it was to both of them crawling into bed with him. The Doctor kissed him, while River sprawled out and watched avidly. Up close, Jack could see that the Doctor had been right about the bruises - most of them were already faded to yellow and green, but there was one along her jaw that was still dark.

 

It was hard to be angry after that. Generally speaking, Jack preferred sex to a spoken apology. He let it go.

 

Things settled back into their usual pattern - planetfalls, playing galactic tourist, running for their lives, and having fantastic sex when everything was said and done. If there was a whisper of unease in Jack's mind, if it seemed that he and River had even less to say to each other on the rare occasions they found themselves alone . . . well, that wasn't so different from how it had always been.

 

Everything was fine, he told himself, and it wasn't even much of a lie until they stopped moving for a few days. The mauve signal indicator on the console started acting up, flickering on and off in strange patterns, and the Doctor parked them in the vortex for repairs. The Doctor spent hours under the console, muttering to himself and the TARDIS in Gallifreyan, River curled up in the library with materials for the exams she'd take when she eventually returned home, and Jack wandered the corridors, unsure why he found himself avoiding both of them.

 

But it wasn't until he found himself fully sheathed inside the Doctor and yet so desperately lonely it made his chest ache, that he realized how badly wrong things had gone.

 

He gritted his teeth and thrust hard, trying to hurt the Doctor a little, or at least get his attention. He wanted the Doctor to groan his name, reach for his hand, turn his head for a kiss - anything at all. Instead, the Doctor slid forward, deeper into River, who moaned and arched her back. The Doctor buried his face in River's hair and mumbled something Jack couldn't make out.

 

Jack's throat tightened. For the first time in his life, he just wanted to come and be done with it. The Doctor and River had more than proven they were capable of taking care of each other, no help from Jack required. If he could just get off, he could roll away and let them finish and neither of them would care when he went off to shower and didn't come back.

 

Except getting off was easier said than done. None of this was working at all for him anymore, and ninety percent of Jack's fantasies involved the Doctor. Realizing once and for all that that would never, ever be mutual felt an awful lot like being hit mid-coitus with a bucket of cold water. Even if it was a bucket he'd seen coming for weeks now.

 

In the end, Jack was saved having to dredge up an old fantasy or piece together a new one. While he was still trying to muster the energy, the Doctor stiffened, gasped, and came. Muscles clamped and locked around Jack's cock, and Jack's orgasm ripped through him. It left him slumped, panting, over the Doctor's back, and a little more inclined to magnanimity. There were innocent explanations for everything that'd happened so far, most of which boiled down to the Doctor being an inconsiderate jackass. Jack wanted to believe the Doctor was just blinded by the newness of his relationship with River. All it would have taken to convince him was a gesture on the Doctor's part. Not a grand one even. Just a little one.

 

But the gesture didn't come. Instead, Jack watched as the Doctor and River petted and caressed and nuzzled each other, both of them clearly having forgotten he was there at all. It was so fucking unfair, he thought, unable to help himself. All the affection he'd had to win from the Doctor, which he'd only just won a century or two ago, was hers for the taking. He hadn't had to be coaxed or cajoled. River had never had to prove her worth or earn her place on the TARDIS. From the moment she'd stepped on board, it had been a given.

 

That should have told him, Jack thought bitterly. He had clearly made a terrible mistake in assuming there was room for three on this TARDIS, just because there had been once before, with Rose. They all three of them had to want it, and none of them really did.

 

Well, fuck that.

 

Anger carried Jack off the bed, out of the room, and down the hall, but it didn't last. It ran out about halfway through his shower, while he was standing under the too-hot spray. There was a lump in his throat that wouldn't quit, no matter how many times he swallowed.

 

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to be furious. Better yet, he wanted to be indifferent. He didn't want to care so fucking much. He was five hundred years old, for Christ's sake, not counting time spent buried alive and mostly dead. He didn't do jealous.

 

But he wasn't jealous. He was hurt. And that was so much worse.

 

Someone rapped at the door. "Jack?" the Doctor called.

 

Jack hunched instinctively. "What?" he said, striving for normal and probably sounding anything but.

 

He hadn't invited the Doctor in, but he came anyway. "Blimey, it's a sauna in here. Are you trying to boil yourself alive?" Jack didn't answer. The Doctor pulled back the shower curtain a few inches, just enough for Jack to see that he was naked, too. His hair clung to his forehead in curls damp from sweat and steam.

 

_Finally noticed I was gone?_ Jack wanted to ask, but there was no universe in which that didn't sound bitter. "River kick you out?" he asked instead.

 

The Doctor shrugged. "A bit. She told me rather pointedly to find you."

 

"Yeah?" Jack tilted his face so that water splashed over his closed eyes. "Why'd she do that?"

 

"Dunno. Maybe something to do with how you disappeared on us? Look, Jack," the Doctor went on, before Jack could reply, "turn the hot water down a bit so I don't get scalded to death and let me soap your back."

 

Jack turned the water off. "Don't need you to soap my back, Doc."

 

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "All right. What's going on? River seems to think we did something wrong, but I really haven't the faintest -"

 

"_We_, Doctor." Jack ripped the towel off the rack and started to vigorously dry his hair. He wanted to wrap the towel around his waist, cover himself up, but he resisted. It would only look defensive. "That's the problem. The _we_ on this ship isn't you and me, it isn't you and me and River, and it sure as hell isn't me and River. It's just you and River."

 

The Doctor frowned. "There's a _we_ that's just you and me, too."

 

"Bullshit," Jack said flatly. "Tell me, how many times have the two of you had sex without me?"

 

The Doctor's eyes widened. He flushed. "If you're not, er, available -"

 

"Right," Jack said, not bothering to point out that he was always available. "And when was the last time you and I had sex, just the two of us?"

 

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "Hang on just one -"

 

"I get it, Doc. I'm not an idiot." Jack finally allowed himself to wrap the towel around his waist, while the Doctor stared, stunned into silence. Would wonders never cease. "But I don't enjoy having it rubbed in my face."

 

The Doctor finally found his voice. Sort of. "Having what rubbed in your face?"

 

Jack glared. "Doctor, I had my cock up your arse, and you never even looked at me."

 

Jack expected the Doctor to flush and frown, but instead he went very white and still. "Bit hard to do in that position, isn't it?" he said, coldly. "Not everyone is as flexible as you are."

 

It was the last straw. Jack turned away to brace himself against the wall of the shower. "Fine, then. I think it's time I was moving on. I'd like you to drop me some place with a spaceport, please."

 

The Doctor's mouth fell open. "You're leaving over this?"

 

"Yeah," Jack said, "I am."

 

He expected an argument, but the Doctor merely stared for a moment, then nodded and turned away. The ache in Jack's throat got just a little bit worse, though he should have known better. The Doctor never argued with a companion who wanted to leave.

 

Just before he left, the Doctor turned. "Jack?" Jack looked up, warily. "I'll take you anywhere and anywhen you want in twenty-four hours. But I want you to think about it till then. Decide if this is really what you want."

 

Jack shook his head. "No, Doctor, it's not what I want. But I can't do this anymore."

 

The flinch this time was so small, Jack thought he might have imagined it. The Doctor nodded. "All right," he said, and closed the door quietly on his way out.


	2. Chapter 2

River made a private bet about whether the Doctor would reappear before she was out of the bath. It would be a bad sign for how things had gone with Jack, but River had seen Jack's face as he slid off the bed, and she knew the Doctor well enough to give him a 50/50 chance of making a total cock-up of it. Worse than 50/50, if River were honest, but she didn't rule out the possibility that he'd managed to babble his way back into Jack's good graces. It wouldn't be the first time.

 

Her fingers wrinkled and the bathwater cooled and still he hadn't returned. River climbed out of the tub and performed her usual post-bath rituals. She went fishing for pajamas, then rifled through the wardrobe for her dressing gown, pushing her way past six of the Doctor's suits to get to it.

 

She paused. Six of the Doctor's suits took up half the wardrobe. The other half was occupied by River's own clothes - trousers, blouses and shirts, a few nice dresses. None of it was Jack's. Jack slept here on nights they had sex, but otherwise he went to his own room at the end of the evening. _Jack likes his space_, she could hear the Doctor saying defensively.

 

She grimaced. Things had been cooking for weeks now, and she had the suspicion that they were about to come to a boil. Her feelings about Jack Harkness were decidedly mixed, but she felt badly for how it was likely to turn out for him. And she'd have to be a lot less intelligent than she was not to realize it was at least partly her own fault. It was that sense of guilt that had made her kick the Doctor out of bed.

 

There were only two places the Doctor was likely to be - Jack's bedroom or the console room - and only one place River was willing to look. She was entirely unsurprised to find him poking at the still-blinkered mauve signal indicator and scowling as though it had insulted his mother. She cleared her throat.

 

"This bloody indicator," the Doctor mumbled. "There's nothing wrong with it, nothing at all. Except it's on when it shouldn't be. The damn thing itches."

 

River rolled her eyes. "Fascinating. Well?"

 

"What?"

 

"Jack!" she said, crossing her arms over her chest. "Did you talk to him?"

 

"Oh, right. Jack." The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck. "Talked to him, yep. He said . . . a lot of things. Total rubbish, most of them."

 

"Ah. And?"

 

The Doctor shrugged. "It's - it's complicated." He heaved a sigh and finally turned to face her. "With Jack, it's - blimey, it's complicated. Because of . . . everything. What he is. What I am. Who we are."

 

"You and I - we're not complicated?"

 

He hunched briefly. "Not in the same way. Not for the same reasons. I can't just - Jack and I don't - River, do we have to do this?" He raked a hand through his hair. "If Jack wants to leave that's his business. We'll meet up again, 'course we will. It's not the end for Jack and me."

 

River blinked. "He's leaving?" The Doctor only shrugged. "And did you try to talk him out of it?"

 

The Doctor looked at him blankly. "No. Why would I? It's his decision."

 

River gritted her teeth, pushed herself off the wall, and strode out without another word.

 

Tracking Jack down took some effort - he clearly didn't want to be found, perhaps especially by River, and the TARDIS knew it. Eventually the ship gave in and she fetched up in front of the library with an underlying sense of, _Well, don't say I didn't warn you_. "Duly noted," she muttered.

 

"Jack?" she called, letting herself in.

 

Pages rustled, and there was a quiet, resigned sigh. "Here."

 

River rounded an enormous, floor-to-ceiling bookcase and found Jack sitting on the shape-shifting sofa, apparently doing nothing at all. She suddenly felt under-dressed; Jack was fully-clothed, including braces and shoes.

 

River sat on the edge of the sofa and twitched the hem of her dressing gown over her lap. Jack eyed her warily. "I'm sorry," she said. "About earlier. It was my fault as much as the Doctor's. We didn't mean to, but we did, and I'm sorry."

 

Jack cleared his throat. "Thank you."

 

He looked away. River winced mentally and leaned back against the sofa cushions, trying to look more at ease than she felt. "The Doctor said you were leaving."

 

He shrugged. "Time to move on. Past time, actually."

 

"For good, though? Maybe you could just go walkabout for a bit. Or," she hesitated, "you could arrange with the Doctor for him to pick you up once he takes me home. I have to go back sometime." An eventuality she resolutely did not think about. She had exams waiting for her, and what was sure to be an exciting career, and exactly nothing else. She wondered occasionally why she should ever bother going home; there was hardly anyone to miss her if she didn't. But a mere mortal like herself could only keep up this sort of life for so long. She had a two, perhaps two and a half decades. Best to go back before she'd changed beyond all recognition.

 

This was what she told herself. But the days and weeks and months went by, and neither she nor the Doctor ever said anything about it.

 

"Nah," Jack said with a shrug. "Doc doesn't need me now he has you."

 

He said it so casually, River would have almost believed he didn't care. "That's not true."

 

Jack shook his head. "Look, River, I appreciate the effort, but we aren't a threesome. We share the Doctor. Don't pretend you won't be relieved to see the back of me."

 

River's mouth fell open. "Jack, how can you say that? What have I ever done to make you think I didn't want you here? You and the Doctor were together long before I met you; you'll be together long after I'm gone. That's how it should be." Or at least, how it _would_ be; _should_ had very little jurisdiction here. Neither did _want_, come to think of it. It had been a terribly long time since River had belonged to anyone, since she'd had someone to call her own. She'd found that in the Doctor, and she would be lying if she did not admit that some dark, unpleasant part of her had always been satisfied by the knowledge that, if the Doctor were forced to choose between her and Jack, she would win in a thrice.

 

Jack cast her a disbelieving look. River looked away, trying rather desperately to channel the cool, rational part of her brain that had been raised on a perfectly civilized planet where three or more partners was normal. That part of her was horrified at how insensitive she and the Doctor had both been to Jack, and felt guilty enough to attempt to avert a trainwreck he and the Doctor both seemed hellbent on.

 

River put a firm lid on the back of her brain. Jack Harkness had never been anything less than civilized towards her - so civilized, in fact, that River had occasionally wondered what made her so much less appealing than the rest of sentient creation. In her time on the TARDIS, she'd seen Jack flirt with cats, lizards, trees, and, on one memorable occasion, rocks. But he had never turned the infamous Harkness charm on her, not once.

 

It made River wonder what she was missing.

 

Jack shrugged at last. "Not really your fault anyway. This was always going to happen. Stupid that I didn't see it sooner. The Doctor doesn't share."

 

There was nothing else to say, really. Jack excused himself a minute or two later, claiming he had to pack. River watched him go, then leaned her head on her hand, rubbing her eyes. She supposed the TARDIS had warned her.

 

She was halfway back to the console room, wondering what the hell she was supposed to say to the Doctor about all this, when a siren began to wail.

 

All in all, River was almost relieved.

 

The relief was short-lived, however. She clapped her hands over her ears, scowling as she marched into the console room. The Doctor was there, of course, throwing himself around the room with his usual mania, tossing levers, pushing buttons, and giving the console a good thwack with the mallet.

 

"What the hell?" she demanded.

 

"Mauve signal!" the Doctor said. He slapped a button and the siren fell mercifully silent. River's ears continued to ring. "Finally! Thirty-second century, it looks like, on the outer rim of human civilization. Very, very outer rim."

 

River rubbed first her eyes, then her whole face. "Do I have time to get dressed or do I need to do this in my dressing gown?"

 

"You have lots of time to get dressed," Jack answered from behind her, "because the Doctor's going to drop me off first. Forty-ninth century, please. Earth will do - actually, make it the spaceport on the moon."

 

The Doctor let the mallet fall. "But - it's a _mauve signal_."

 

"You have a _time machine_," Jack countered.

 

Puppy eyes. Puppy eyes to the _nth_ degree. River rolled her eyes. She had often thought, back before she'd developed an immunity, that the Doctor's puppy eyes should be declared a Class IV weapon and banned. "But we were about to - and you could just - one last time, Jack. One last adventure before you go."

 

"One last time. And then one after that, and then one after that. Doctor, I'll never leave."

 

"Ah," the Doctor said, smiling and rocking back on his heels.

 

Jack frowned. "Doctor."

 

"I'm going to go get dressed," River interjected. She turned on her heel and headed back to her room. She dressed in trousers and a jumper, then pulled her hair back, pinning it through with two long lacquered sticks the Doctor had picked up for her somewhere. She dawdled a bit, wanting to give the Doctor and Jack enough time to sort themselves out, until the TARDIS suddenly jerked beneath her feet. River banged into the bathroom wall, swore, and straightened, rubbing her arm. They'd landed.

 

Back in the console room, she was unsurprised to find Jack, wrapped in his great coat, standing by and glowering as the Doctor stared intently at the read-outs on the console.

 

"We're on a ship," the Doctor declared. "Appears to be . . ." He trailed off, checking the read-out again. "No one on board. Huh."

 

"Good," Jack said. "Problem solved. Now you can drop me off."

 

"Oh, but don't you want to investigate? Bit funny, don't you think, ship just floating in space like this, giving off a mauve signal?"

 

"No. Not even a little. They got in trouble, sent out the mauve signal, but someone got here before we did and rescued them. They were in too much of a hurry to turn the signal off before they left. Let's go before it blows."

 

"Ah, but," the Doctor said, with the triumphant glee of one holding a trump card, "where's the other ship, then? Because we've arrived very shortly after the mauve signal was tripped, only about five standard minutes. Unless the other ship made a wormhole jump immediately - highly unlikely, being that there is no wormhole here - it would still be within range for the TARDIS to detect. But, as you can see, it isn't. Also," he added, when Jack opened his mouth, "this isn't a thirty-second century ship."

 

River raised an eyebrow. "I thought you said -"

 

"I said we were in the thirty-second century. But according to the TARDIS, this ship is from the sixty-fifth century. A thirty-second century ship is still primitive, little more than a sardine can with thrusters. This ship . . . is not that."

 

Jack, River noticed, had gone very still. "Is this an Agency ship, Doctor?"

 

"Might be. Definitely time-mobile."

 

"Then I really need to not be here."

 

"No one on board, like I said. Don't be paranoid." The Doctor flipped a few switches and strode around the console to whip his coat off its habitual strut. "So! What we have is an abandoned ship, three thousand years out of its time, in perfect repair and completely abandoned. All shuttles accounted for, too," he added before River could ask. "Still not intrigued, Captain?"

 

"No," Jack said flatly.

 

"Ah, but you will be! _Allons-y_!" The Doctor threw the TARDIS door open and vanished into the murk beyond.

 

"For fuck's sake," Jack said, and stormed off after him.

 

It was eerily dark on the ship. Dark and cold - River buttoned her coat up to her throat and pulled her hands into the sleeves. She followed the sound of Jack's footsteps through the winding, narrow corridors of the ship. She passed through the galley, where she paused, taking in the sight of dinner fully laid out, food now congealing on plates. She moved on after a moment, trailing the voices down the hall to the engine room.

 

"You manipulative bastard," Jack was saying as River entered. "You did this on purpose, didn't you?"

 

"Don't be such a drama queen, Jack," the Doctor said, with no apparent irony. "I'll take you wherever you want as soon as we figure out what happened here."

 

He crouched down, peering intently into the inner workings of the engine, and so missed the moment Jack went from frustrated and furious to defeated and exhausted. His shoulders slumped, his head dropped, and he sighed. "Fine," he said, shrugging. "Come find me when you're done." He turned, pushed past River without so much as a flicker of acknowledgment, and disappeared back the way they'd come.

 

The Doctor poked his head out, frowning. He already had a smear of grease across his forehead. "What's his problem?"

 

River gave in to temptation and kicked him in the shin.

 

Jack hadn't gone very far, just to the galley. He'd sat down on a battered, disreputable sofa, hunched over, and put his head in his hands. River leaned in the threshold.

 

"I hate him," Jack said at last, sitting up.

 

River sighed. "I really don't think -"

 

"Oh, but I do. I've hated him on and off for most of my life. Loved him, too, of course, at the same time." Jack shook his head. "I just always thought . . . someday we'll get there. Someday he'll look at me and I won't feel wrong anymore, and he won't only want me because I'm the one who can't die. And this time around, I thought it'd actually happened. I was so sure . . ." He swallowed, throat working visibly. "And then you came along."

 

"I never meant -"

 

"No, you didn't. But, like you said earlier, you did. And he loved you, just like that." Jack buried his face in his hands again. "I hate him, but I can't blame him. It's my fault in the end. Pathetic, it's just . . . pathetic. The way I keep coming back, begging for whatever scraps he'll give me."

 

"Jack -"

 

"It's true," he snapped, "and don't tell me you're sorry about all of this, because you're not. You're _not_."

 

River glared. "That's unfair. Just because you wouldn't be sorry if I left -" She bit the rest of the sentence off, aware that this was a dangerous digression for them. "Look," she said at last, after a long, uncomfortable stretch of silence, "whether or not you believe me, I never wanted this for you. Or for him."

 

No response. Jack simply turned and walked away, back towards the TARDIS. River wondered if she should bother trying again. It wasn't as though anything she could say would make Jack feel better. This was, most emphatically, not her job.

 

She'd nearly decided to go back to the Doctor when Jack appeared again in the doorway. His eyes were wide, his face pale. He looked terrified.

 

"What?" River said, straightening in alarm. "What is it?"

 

"The TARDIS," Jack said breathlessly. "It's gone."

 

***

 

It was fortunate, Jack realized later, that he'd had River with him in those first moments. The ship was just a little too similar to Satellite Five for Jack's comfort. It had the same sense of desolate isolation, the same dark, cold stillness. Jack didn't want to think what he might have done if he'd had the slightest cause to think he'd been abandoned again.

 

"That's ridiculous," River said reasonably, and went on ahead, leaving Jack in the galley. Jack leaned on the table and breathed deeply. The galley smelled like overcooked protein patties. It was almost comforting, the Agency had always sent them as rations and no one had ever been able to get them to come out not overcooked. Back when he'd been a snot-nosed recruit, Jack and his friends had joked that they came out of the package that way.

 

There was no _maybe_ about it. This was an Agency ship flying incognito.

 

River came flying back into the room. "The TARDIS is gone!"

 

Even through his terror, Jack managed a small smirk. "I did say that."

 

"But I just left the Doctor back that way! I kicked him in the shin and I left him there! There's no way -"

 

"Unless this was a trap," Jack said grimly, "and we walked straight into it and now someone's got their hands on the TARDIS."

 

Not good, if that was the case. The TARDIS was a potent weapon in the wrong hands - granted, anyone but the Doctor would have a hard time convincing her to cooperate, but it could be done. She could be broken. The Master had done it, once.

 

. . . had River just said she'd kicked him in the shin?

 

"C'mon." River grabbed his hand and dragged him back towards the engine room. "Doctor!" she called as they ran. "DOCTOR!"

 

No answer. Jack held his breath, hoping for a tousled head to poke itself out of the engine room. _Blimey, River, there's no need to shout_. What's wrong?

 

Except it didn't.

 

The engine room was empty. "DOCTOR!" River called again, turning.

 

"Quiet," Jack said, putting a hand on her arm. He closed his eyes. His hearing was excellent, even by fifty-first century standards - probably thirty percent better than River's, when he bothered to concentrate. It was a small ship. If the Doctor was on it and moving, Jack would hear him. And since the Doctor never stopped moving, the fact that Jack couldn't hear him meant he wasn't on the ship.

 

"Well?" River hissed impatiently.

 

Jack opened his eyes. "I don't think he's here."

 

River shook her head. "That's impossible. I just saw him. And he wouldn't leave."

 

She said it with such certainty. Jack felt an immediate stab of pure envy. River absolutely believed, without a doubt, that the Doctor would never leave her behind. And she was probably right. But the petulant, hurt, and downright furious part of Jack made him say, "I wouldn't be so sure. He left me behind on an abandoned satellite full of Dalek dust and corpses."

 

River flinched. "But - no." She shook her head, crossed her arms over her chest, and visibly dug in. "He was right here. I saw him. Something very strange is happening, but he didn't just leave us."

 

Jack sighed. "Yeah. Probably you're right."

 

"I know I am. Now." She held her hand out. "Let's go. And don't even think about suggesting we split up - that's how we lost the Doctor."

 

"Right," he said, accepting her hand. They linked their fingers together. River led the way out of the engine room and into the corridor beyond, but once there Jack slipped into the lead, more and more certain of where they needed to go to find their answers. "I'm pretty sure this was - is - a Time Agency ship," he said. "They must've been trying to pass as a regular ship." Jack paused in front of an unmarked door. Sixty-fifth century, the Doctor had said. Fourteen hundred years out of Jack's time. He'd met agents from the future and been on ships almost as advanced, and there was one thing that never changed, the heart of any Time Agency ship: the Temporal Shift Coordinator.

 

It was an unimpressive name for a seemingly unimpressive bit of gadgetry, but without it, a Time Agency ship was just a ship, capable of going from point A to point B well enough, but unable to jump in time. The TSC was housed separately from the regular engine to minimize the possibility of damage to both at the same time, and exactly where it resided varied from ship to ship. But all the other doors had been labeled thus far and this one wasn't. If he hadn't once been a Time Agent, he might have thought it was just a broom cupboard.

 

A TSC disaster was the one thing that might explain everything. If the crew had shifted but the ship hadn't - or the ship had shifted and the crew hadn't - that would explain why they'd found the ship deserted. And it might even explain how they'd lost the Doctor, and how they might get him back.

 

Jack gripped the handle on the door and swung it open - and gasped as a bitterly cold breeze swept over him.

 

"Jack - what the - oh my God." River pushed him aside. Jack let himself be pushed, too stunned to resist.

 

Where a room should have been - probably a small room, the average TSC being only about the size of a house cat - was . . . another ship. But not a space ship, a _ship_ ship, sails billowing overhead. The cold air stinging Jack's skin was tinged with salt, and he could hear the crash of waves against its bow. They were _at sea_ \- far at sea, with a full moon gleaming on the horizon and swirls of stars reeling overhead. He took in a lungful of salt air, so different from the stale, recycled air on the space ship behind them, and wished, briefly, that the Doctor were with them. This was the sort of thing he loved - the moments where the universe handed them a beautiful, baffling gift.

 

"Oh my God," River said again, pushing past Jack this time. She stumbled over the first step down to the deck, steadied herself on Jack, and then tugged him after her as she stepped out, face tilted up to the stars. "Where the hell are we?"

 

Jack looked up, squinted. The constellations were definitely Earth's, and if he wasn't mistaken . . . "Mid-Atlantic."

 

"When, do you think?"

 

Jack shrugged. It was very, very dark on the ship, but the sails and the vague outline he could discern were clue enough. "Early nineteenth century, maybe. Or late eighteenth. Probably no later."

 

"Wow." River's fingers tightened on Jack's.

 

He couldn't help smiling. She was stunning like this, he admitted to himself, bathed in moonlight, her eyes lit up with wonder. She was not beautiful, really, but she was what in former eras - in this very era, actually - might be called a handsome woman. She glanced sideways at him, caught him looking, and smiled.

 

Jack looked away at once, though he didn't let go of her hand. She was right - it was dangerous to lose track of each other when there were temporal anomalies floating about. "It's interesting," he said, as indifferently at possible, "but it's a symptom, not the cause. And it won't help us find the Doctor." He turned to pass through the threshold and back to the space ship.

 

Except there was no threshold. No door at all, not even a wall. Just more ship, rocking gently in the ocean swells.

 

"Shit," he said.

 

"What?" River gasped, sounding remarkably like the Doctor. "_What_?"

 

"Hell," Jack said. He took a few steps forward, hoping the gateway might be triggered by someone passing through it. Nothing. Not even a ripple. He should have known. Those sorts of gateways were notoriously unstable under even the most controlled of circumstances. There was nothing to say that same portal would open again, or if it did that it would lead them back to the Doctor. "Goddammit!" he burst out, kicking at a pile of rubbish in frustration.

 

The pile of rubbish . . . _clattered_.

 

Jack blinked. He was pretty sure eighteenth century ships weren't supposed to have light-weight metal all over their decks. Momentarily distracted, he looked more closely at the rubbish he'd just kicked over.

 

It was - but it couldn't be - but it was - a Dalek.

 

There was no mistaking the pepperpot shape or its distinctive eyestalk, even if it was in several badly dented pieces and buried beneath some salt-encrusted, briney rope. Jack stared, then grabbed his blaster out of its holster. It was about as much good as a squirt gun against a Dalek, but its weight was comforting in Jack's hands. He crept forward, River on his heels, and prodded at the Dalek's casing.

 

It was empty, except for a rim of dried homicidal alien goo.

 

The damn thing was dead. There was no malice about it, it was just a thing now, a dead, pathetic piece of junk. The thing inside that had made it evil was gone.

 

"Jack," River said, so calmly he knew she had to be panicking. "What is that?"

 

"It's a Dalek," Jack said flatly. He felt her stiffen in alarm. "A dead one, anyway, and I don't know how many others there are. I've got my blaster - don't suppose you left the TARDIS armed."

 

"No. Why would I?"

 

Jack rolled his eyes. The Doctor had a habit of taking the _dimmest_ intelligent people Jack had ever met as companions. "Never mind. We're not going to be here long enough for it to matter." He jammed his blaster into the waist of his trousers. Then he reached out, wrapped an arm around River's waist, keyed in coordinates for London on his vortex manipulator, and activated the teleport.

 

Nothing happened.

 

Jack did it again. Still nothing. It was jammed. And not just the teleport, Jack saw, but the entire computer. It had no idea which way was up, much less where they were or when they were. And if it didn't know that much, it couldn't teleport them or time-jump them at all.

 

"Fuck. The computer's jammed."

 

River nodded, a slight puff of breath through her lips her only sign of distress. "All right. What are the chances of the Doctor finding us, do you think?"

 

Jack frowned. "Not sure. He won't let you go easily, that's for sure. But there's a lot of time and space out there. Normally he can track my vortex manipulator, but I'm not sure he'll be able to pick up the trail with it jammed up like this."

 

"So . . . fair to middling?" River guessed.

 

Slim, actually. Very slim. "Sounds about right. But it might be awhile."

 

"All right then." River drew a deep breath. "First things first, right? We find out if we're alone on this ship."

 

Jack tightened his grip on her hand. "Right," he said, retrieving his blaster. The metal was cold, but at least it was a solid reminder that he was not helpless against the little motherfucking mollusks. He wondered if he should just find the safest bolthole on the ship and stuff River into it. The Doctor would probably say yes, but he ran the risk of losing her temporally, not to mention pissing her off. And if this ship was overrun with Daleks, that wouldn't save her. He couldn't save her, if that were the case, and he wasn't sure that saving himself would be worth the effort. She was a hand to hold, if nothing else, and if he'd have preferred to be holding the Doctor's hand . . . well, Jack had lived more than long enough to realized the Stones were only half right: you don't always get what you want, but a lot of the time, you don't even get what you need. Sometimes fate just laughs as she dumps you onto a ship filled with the dried-out husks of your mortal enemies, with no one but your soon-to-be-ex-lover's new flame for company.

 

"Yeah," Jack said, and backed slowly away from the dead Dalek. "Let's find some light."


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor sat rubbing his bruised shin and scowling. _Humans_. The only reason a species so given to random acts of physical violence survived so long was that they were equally given to shagging anything that moved. He had no bloody idea why River had kicked him just now before stomping off back down the corridor.

 

Well. He said "no bloody idea," he meant "some small inkling, perhaps more of a notion."

 

All right, a certainty.

 

He'd been an ass to Jack. Again. He never really meant to, it just happened. After so many centuries, he just assumed Jack knew how he felt about him and didn't need to be told all the bloody time. Apparently he'd been mistaken. Again.

 

And now here he was. With a sore shin and no companions.

 

He wondered, not for the first time, if he should have told Jack about the Library. He hadn't wanted to think too hard about it, hadn't wanted his joy at finding River again to be tempered by memories of how it would end. He hadn't told Jack, and so Jack had been bewildered at how fast it had all happened. They'd met River while running for their lives, as usual, but when the adventure had ended and it was time for them to leave, he'd asked her to come with them. Things had progressed from there rather quickly.

 

Jack had gone along with it all, because he'd had to. But the Doctor wondered if he should have explained. Perhaps Jack would not have felt so bereft if he'd known why the Doctor's feelings for River had developed so quickly. Even if it felt unfair for Jack to know how River would die, when of course River couldn't know.

 

The Doctor sighed to himself and got to his feet, leaving aside that particular conundrum in favor of a less aggravating one. Whatever had happened on this ship, it hadn't happened in this room. The engine was perfectly normal, aside from some of the parts needing to be replaced. What he needed was the Temporal Shift Coordinator. The Doctor gave a snobbish sniff. Time Agency TSC's were notoriously unreliable. Ticking time bombs, especially compared to the brilliance that was his own ship. It was a wonder the entire Time Agency hadn't -

 

The Doctor weaved suddenly, stumbling into a wall. He leaned there, breathing through sudden dizziness. It felt as though the walls of Time itself had undulated - and a little like his liver and kidneys had temporarily switched places.

 

It was . . . remarkably unpleasant.

 

He drew a deep breath in through his nose, as though he could smell whatever temporal event had just taken place - not that he could, of course, that was patently ridiculous. But something had happened, a significant temporal shift, and not a well-controlled one, not even a semi-controlled one. It had been spontaneous and dangerous, the sort of temporal event that resulted in lethal rips in the fabric of space and time.

 

The ship had gone very quiet.

 

The Doctor had been able to hear Jack and River only a few moments earlier, not well enough to make out what they were saying, but enough to know where they were. And now he couldn't.

 

He forced himself not to leap to immediate conclusions, however based upon previous experience with any and all of his companions those conclusions might be. The Doctor strode briskly out of the engine room, back through the galley - no Jack, no River - and into the TARDIS. The console room was empty. He flung his coat over one of the struts and strode to the console. No humans on either ship - no life at all, according to the TARDIS, aside from herself and himself. She'd felt the shift as well, it'd left her a bit queasy. He stroked a wall soothingly, then tried to get a more specific read on when Jack and River might have gone.

 

Five minutes later, the Doctor banged on the console in frustration, earning himself a stern rebuke from his ship. There was a cloud of artron energy fizzing up his instruments. One reading told him they'd shifted five minutes earlier, another one four hours later. A third reading told him nothing at all, the interference was so bad. It was dissipating, but slowly. It would be at least twenty-four hours before he could get a reliable reading.

 

He did a scan to find the areas of the ship least affected by shift - or shifts, he was beginning to suspect. Dense concentrations of artron energy showed up as bright patches, and one of the worst was right where he'd parked the TARDIS, just outside the galley. The other, the Doctor saw, was in a nondescript closet, probably where the TSC was housed. Perhaps if he moved the TARDIS to a part of the ship less affected, he might be able to get a proper reading. Then he could simply go back - or forward - to retrieve his companions. He could even be waiting for them when they showed up. In fact, he told himself, in some sense he'd already rescued them!

 

Nerves somewhat calmed, he shifted the TARDIS to the crews' quarters, where the density of artron energy was the lowest. It was still too high to get a decent reading, but he'd only have to wait an hour or so. Just enough time, the Doctor decided, to go exploring. After all, personal effects could be so very revealing. He shrugged into his coat and left the TARDIS with the mental instructions to alert him when they could do the scan.

 

The first few cabins he searched were not very useful. The first was shared by two of the lowest ranked crew members, who apparently had as much of an idea why they were there as the Doctor currently did. The second was the chief medical officer's, from which the Doctor gleaned that either the Time Agency had reverted to using alcohol as a cure-all or the CMO had a serious drinking problem.

 

Gradually, the Doctor pieced together a surprisingly complete picture of life on the ship. All the little pieces of people's lives, lived in close quarters and under stressful conditions, came to light through his perusal of their belongings. Love affairs, food, personal vices and ambitions . . . by the time he came to the last of the cabins, the Doctor felt he knew these people better than he might have liked. In fact, he knew everything except what he'd set out to know: why they were there.

 

Which only made him more certain than ever that that was the key to the whole thing.

 

The last cabin belonged to the captain. The Doctor had saved it on purpose, and it was there that he found two things that rocked him.

 

The first was a holostill of a young man, his arm slung around another young man's shoulders. Both of them wore shabby uniforms, of the sort given to enlisted men and women the universe over. What shocked him so badly about this particular holo was that the man on the left, mugging for the holocam, was Jack Harkness.

 

The second thing was a data chip tucked into a false bottom in the middle drawer of the cabin's small desk. The Doctor took one look at it and felt both hearts skip several beats. The insignia on the chip's casing wasn't in English - in fact, it wasn't in any language the Doctor had ever expected to see again outside the TARDIS. It bore the Seal of Rassilon, and a complicated, twisted, serpentine symbol the Doctor had not seen in two lifetimes.

 

_By order of the Council of Gallifrey._

 

The floor dropped out from beneath him. An abandoned Time Agency ship, out of its time and drifting, random, uncontrolled temporal events, _Jack_, who had been missing two years of memories when the Doctor met him - of _course_! Why hadn't he seen it before?

 

The ship was a time mine. A trap for Daleks and their allies, one half of two connected time loops, the center point of a temporal figure-eight. Somewhere on it was a portal into another time, and if the Doctor knew his companions, he'd bet his screwdriver _and_ his entire supply of tea that they'd fallen straight through it by now. Which meant they were somewhere, somewhen, easy prey for the reapers that lay in wait.

 

Reapers, and any surviving Daleks. The Doctor would have liked to believe there weren't any, but he'd seen them come back from the brink too often. They went on and he lost everything.

 

"_Not this time_," he said aloud, fiercely. He didn't know how and he didn't know why - the ship shouldn't have been there at all, it should have been time-locked like everything else connected to the Time War - but the bloody Daleks didn't get them.

 

He shoved the data chip into the pocket of his jacket along with the holo of Jack and climbed up the ladder, hand over determined hand. Time mine portals were one-way, and Jack's vortex manipulator would be about as useful as a pocket watch. But the Doctor would find them. After all, somewhere and somewhen he already had, or he could never have met River in the Library.

 

Except, of course, that it was entirely possible he could screw this up and damage the timelines beyond repair. The latter was simply much more comforting.

 

***

 

In the end, Jack lost track of how many Dalek husks they found on the deck of the ship. He almost got used to turning around and tripping over an eyestalk or one of those ludicrous plungers in his futile efforts to sail the ship with just himself and River.

 

Almost.

 

The first night, they didn't sleep until almost dawn. When he noticed his vision start to blur, and River nearly faceplanted into a pile of dead Daleks, Jack decided it was time to call it a night, if only for a few hours. Together they'd gone down into the belly of the ship and found a bed made up in one of the cabins, big enough for two, if only just. They'd both stripped down silently, Jack to his undershirt and trousers, River to her shirt and knickers.

 

It was freezing; they lay without touching for a few very awkward moments until Jack reached out and took River's hand. She rolled over into his arms and he wrapped her up, letting her warm him. He hadn't much experience holding her, not for as much time as they'd spent in bed together. They'd have both rather been holding someone else, but she was warm. Solid. Comforting.

 

He left the lantern burning.

 

They spent the whole of their second day shifting Dalek remains down into the holds. That was scary enough, but every few seconds Jack found himself glancing up into the sky, wondering what had killed them and if it would be back for seconds. They looked as though something had simply scooped them out. It was fucking creepy.

 

By the time they finished, it was nearly full dark and the moon had risen. And it was then that Jack noticed the moon hadn't changed.

 

It should have waned by then, but it still hung low and full in the cloudless sky. Between struggling to sail the ship with his scant knowledge of ancient navigation equipment and wondering how they were ever going to find the Doctor again, the moon not changing was the least of Jack's worries until he realized all at once what it meant.

 

Their struggles with the ship were for naught. They were going nowhere and nowhen.

 

In the morning, when River woke, Jack greeted her with a cup of coffee - thank God they had landed on a wealthy merchantman with a ready supply of coffee - and said, "We have a problem."

 

"Another one?" River said wearily. She was pale, and there were dark circles under her eyes. "What now?"

 

Best to be direct about this. "The moon hasn't changed in two nights. We're in a time loop."

 

River crossed her arms over her chest. "A time loop. Lovely. And how long can that go on?"

 

"Awhile," Jack said, uneasily. "I was stuck in one for five years once."

 

River's eyes widened and her jaw dropped. "Oh _God_."

 

Jack could only agree. He nodded. River took several deep breaths. "All right," she said at last, staring out at the endless expanse of water. The sun was creeping over the horizon, the exact same sunrise they'd caught a glimpse of the day before. Not one photon out of place. "How do we get out?"

 

"If I knew that, I'd have spent a lot less than five years stuck in that other one."

 

"Can the Doctor find us in a time loop?"

 

Since she wasn't look at him, Jack let himself grimace. "I don't know. Probably."

 

"Maybe, you mean."

 

"Yeah."

 

"Well, that's just - I don't want to spend five years on this ship!"

 

"Well," Jack said, grasping for a bright side, "the good news is that the rations won't go bad and we won't run out of water."

 

"Yeah. Bloody marvelous news, that." She rubbed a hand over her face, already reddened from the sun. "Not sure how much more good news like that I can take."

 

Jack watched her briefly, reading the misery she'd hidden in the lines of her face and the hunch of her shoulders. It helped to focus on her, made it possible almost to forget the dozens of dead Daleks down below. Almost.

 

To hell with this. He climbed to his feet. "I'll be right back."

 

He'd broken the lock on the safe in the captain's quarters the morning of the second day. There hadn't been anything useful in it, save a formidable stash of liquor. Getting drunk wouldn't help - the hangover would surely render any short-term benefit more than moot - but a sip or two of port followed by a dose of Captain Jack's Cure for What Ails You might do the trick for them both.

 

He found two tumblers stashed behind the bottle, but he only took one with him up on deck. River leaned against the railing, looking exhausted and, more worrying still, a little defeated. She only looked up when Jack put his hand on her back, rubbing lightly between her shoulder blades.

 

"What's that?" River asked, peering at the bottle.

 

"Very expensive port, if I'm not mistaken." He uncorked the bottle and poured a reasonable amount into the tumbler.

 

She raised an eyebrow at him. "This is your plan?"

 

"Half of it."

 

"What's the other half?"

 

"Orgasms," Jack said succinctly. "Yours and mine."

 

She gave him a fond, if exasperated, look. "Jack. If I were falling off a cliff, I would be more in the mood than I am right now."

 

"Only because we haven't started yet."

 

"_Jack_."

 

He offered her the tumbler. She accepted it from him warily, sipped, made a face, then sipped again. "Strong," she remarked.

 

Jack hummed his agreement and took it back from her. "So, up here or down below?"

 

River groaned. "Neither." He frowned and she gave a resigned shrug. "Up here, I think. It's creepy down there with all those things."

 

Jack nodded. "Good call. Back in a bit." He handed her the tumbler and climbed down into the narrow little corridor. He raided their stateroom for blankets and hauled them back up to create a make-shift bed under an overhang, mostly out of the wind. Then he faced her and knelt on the bed. She came to stand beside him. They watched each other for a long moment, as though both waiting for something. Jack forced himself not to move. He'd brought them this far. If she wanted it, she had to do the rest.

 

At last she knelt, took one last sip from the tumbler of port, and set it aside.

 

It was the first time, Jack realized, that their attention had ever been focused solely on each other. He found her attractive, of course, but when they were in bed with the Doctor, he never spent much time with her. They had touched each other, certainly, but it'd never gone much beyond that. He'd never lost himself inside her or licked her till she melted. She'd never spanked him or tied him up and ridden him till he cried for mercy. It was a shame, too, because Jack suspected he and River were extremely compatible.

 

Which, come to think of it, might've been the reason they'd never done this. There was little doubt in Jack's mind that the Doctor had never intended for them to become intimate.

 

Jack buried his fingers in her long, flyaway hair, hopelessly tangled after days in the salt breeze, and kissed her. It was strange to know someone's body so well, to know exactly where to touch and lick and bite, and yet never have done it before. Jack knew that mouthing the pulse point on River's throat would make her moan, that the skin on the insides of her elbows and the backs of her knees was very sensitive, that once she was aroused she liked having her nipples pinched. He'd watched the Doctor with her dozens of times, and Jack was nothing if not a fast learner. But he had to force himself to stop looking over his shoulder, as though the Doctor might walk in at any moment and catch them doing something naughty.

 

_Fuck_. Jack felt himself harden at the very idea. Why the hell hadn't they ever played that game before?

 

No. Jack forced himself away from thoughts of the Doctor. For once it was about him and River. Dismissive as he'd once been of the idea, he thought it had the potential to be brilliant.

 

And it was.

 

Jack started with the basics. He took a sip of port, just enough to wet his lips, then kissed her. He covered her body with his own, pressing her down into the blankets, wrapping her up and warming her. He stroked down her sides, skirted the edges of her breasts, and scattered kisses across her throat, her neck, her collarbone. They shared more port-flavored kisses; River's hands tightened on Jack's biceps and he felt her pressing her hips against his, unconsciously asking for more.

 

"Jack," she gasped. He grinned, knowing exactly what she wanted and how much he was going to enjoy giving it to her. He knelt back, unzipped her trousers, and pulled them down and off, shoving them out of the warm cocoon of blankets. He lay on his stomach; he was still wearing his own trousers, and the position wasn't comfortable, but there were more important things to consider. Such as the way River's breathing quickened and the heady musk of her arousal, strong under the blankets. Jack couldn't see much, but he didn't need to; this was better to do by touch. He used the tips of his fingers to spread her open, just barely caressing between her folds. She quivered under his hands and he braced her hips, lowering his head to brush his lips against her. She moaned, her hand coming to rest in Jack's hair.

 

He started slow, teasing, always just a little shy of where she wanted him to be. He slipped one finger inside her; she clenched around him and his cock twitched in sympathetic response. He braced himself on his elbow and reached down to touch himself through his trousers, rewarding himself with a squeeze every time River moaned. He groaned, the sound turning to vibrations and setting off a loop of sweet sensation that soon had the two of them in a state of gasping, insensible arousal.

 

River tugged at his hair. Jack sighed in relief as he was finally able to shed his trousers. River's knees came up and she reached down, touching him for the first time. He nearly wept in relief when she wasted no time, guiding him in with hot, sure hands. He entered her in one smooth thrust and she came at once, rippling around him. It was all he could do to hold on and try desperately not to follow her over the edge.

 

It was torture not to start thrusting right away, but he had to give River some recovery time. He held her as she came down, biting his lip to anchor himself as she continued to flutter. At last - at _last_ \- she opened her eyes, gifting him with a smile both sweet and filthy. She knew exactly how hard - _ahem_ \- this was for him and she was loving every second of it. He was just about to move, to take a little revenge, when she clenched around him, holding him in place and smiling up at him all the while.

 

He gasped. "River, oh, oh God. If you keep doing that -" He broke off again, sucking in air in hard gulps.

 

She unclenched all at once and he fell forward, catching himself before he landed on top of her. He breathed deeply through his surprise and disappointment. She grinned, propping herself up on her elbow to reach for the port. She sipped and pulled his head down for a kiss. Jack didn't think he'd ever drink port again without thinking of River Song.

 

It took him a few tries to find the right angle, the one that made her shiver and arch her back, but once he did, he set up a steady pace, nothing so fast and hard that it'd be uncomfortable for her, but enough to satisfy Jack's own urges. His world narrowed to River's face, her body beneath his, the wet warmth of her surrounding him, and then it narrowed even further, down to a single point of hot, almost painful pleasure. Jack thrust once, twice more, and that single point exploded into a million smaller ones all over his body.

 

He collapsed and buried his face in her hair, utterly spent. He thought she'd come a second time, but he wasn't sure. His answer came when she moved beneath him, reaching to touch herself. Jack covered her hand with his, nudging it out of the way, and swirled his finger around her clit. That was all it took - her face contorted beautifully and her head tilted back, exposing her neck. He kissed the pulse point in her neck and nursed her carefully through the aftershocks.

 

Neither of them spoke. A perfect silence descended, save for the soft slapping of the waves against the sides of the ship. After a minute or two, River moved, stretching. "Thank you," she said, smiling at him. "That was lovely."

 

"Entirely my pleasure, I assure you," Jack said with a smile. River rolled over so her back was to Jack's chest; he brought his knees up behind hers.

 

River sighed. "This is nice," she remarked. "Why didn't we ever do this before?"

 

Jack shrugged, knowing she'd feel it. "We didn't much like each other?" he suggested wryly.

 

"Ah. Yes. Seems a bit silly now."

 

"Don't know about silly. Pointless, maybe."

 

"Yeah." She fell silent - sleeping, Jack hoped. He forced himself to stay awake, keeping watch even though there had been no sign of danger thus far. He was startled when she stirred suddenly, lifting her head.

 

"Jack."

 

"Mmm?"

 

"Do you think the Doctor will be all right? If we can't - and he can't -"

 

Jack sighed. "I don't know. Losing companions hurts him, every time, even if they just leave to get on with their lives. Losing you like this -"

 

"Losing _us_," she corrected, turning over to frown at him. "God, you really don't think he cares, do you?"

 

Jack didn't answer. Then he dropped his head to rest on River's shoulder and said, "Sometimes I'm certain he does. Sometimes I'm certain he doesn't. Most days, I just don't know. You don't know what it's like," he added, avoiding River's eyes. "He doesn't run hot and cold with you like he does with me. And that isn't your fault, it's always been that way." He fell silent. River waited, exuding patience. "I'm not jealous that he loves you," he went on at last. "I'm jealous that he loves you without stipulations and conditions and subclauses with addendums, most of which I'm not privy to until I violate one of them and then it's weeks - or months, or years - of being subjected to his own special brand of smug disapproval."

 

"Oh," River said quietly.

 

"Yeah. So I don't know what losing me will do to him, because I don't have a fucking clue what having me has meant to him. But you," Jack sighed, "I haven't seen him like this with anyone since Rose, and losing her almost killed him."

 

River grimaced. "Not really the answer I was hoping for."

 

"Ah. Well then," Jack smiled grimly, "I'm sure he'll be all right. The Doctor's always all right."

 

"Right," River muttered. She glanced away, drew a deep breath, and seemed to make a decision. She looked up and met his eyes steadily. "I'm sorry he's like that with you. You don't deserve it."

 

Jack swallowed hard. "Thanks," he said hoarsely.

 

"My father was like that, a little," she offered, hesitantly. "Nothing was ever good enough."

 

"Parents can be like that," Jack said, without really thinking. He lifted his head and looked at her. "I never hear you talk about anything at home. You've mentioned your father twice now - are you close?"

 

"We were. He died when I was fifteen." She shrugged at Jack's dumbfounded stare. "It's been ten years. The Doctor knows, we just never talk about it. It brings up all these questions about what I'm going to do when I leave the TARDIS. There isn't much for me at home."

 

"You still miss him," Jack said, knowing it was true from his own experience as much as the wistful note in her voice. "Every damn day."

 

She nodded, throat tight. "He had ridiculous standards for me, but when I actually managed to achieve them -"

 

"Then he'd look at you," Jack finished, "and it was like you'd hung the moon and the stars, and all it did was make you want more of that - that blinding approval."

 

"Yeah," she breathed.

 

"I find it a little disturbing that I feel about the Doctor the same way you did about your father," Jack remarked. Not that his relationship with the Doctor had ever let itself be tucked into a nice, neat box he could easily label. "But I guess he's my CO, too." He hesitated, not wanting his next question to come out the wrong way. "He . . . he never makes you feel like that, does he?"

 

River shook her head. "No. He's been furious with me before, but never disappointed."

 

There was a long silence. At last Jack murmured, very quietly, "Lucky girl."

 

River looked at him, very steadily, then kissed him. She drew back, thumb rubbing gently against Jack's temple. "Get some sleep," she suggested. "You were up all night. I'll keep watch for now."

 

Jack nodded, grateful for the offer. He nestled himself against her side and closed his eyes, mind wiped blissfully blank of everything except the heavy, languid pleasure suffusing his body.

 

When he woke, it was to River's hand on his arm, shaking him lightly. "Hmm. Um. What?" he managed, trying to blink cobwebs from his brain.

 

"Jack," she said, her voice so controlled that he knew it had to be bad. "Is it possible we've landed in a parallel universe with dragons?"

 

"What?" He blinked, wondering if he was still asleep after all. She pointed upwards and he twisted round to to see. The sky was a pale, washed out blue, and the sun had climbed while they'd slept. Jack saw at once what she meant: huge, winged shapes beat in circles overhead. Jack's mouth went dry. There was no mistaking that silhouette.

 

He swallowed. "Those aren't dragons. Those are reapers."


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor gritted his teeth and braced himself on the edge of the console. His five physical senses were mostly blocked so he could concentrate on the three temporal ones available to him. The TARDIS, his brilliant TARDIS, had managed to track the minute traces left behind by the portal Jack and River had fallen through. It'd taken some fancy footwork, but now he could sense the time loop looming like the wall of a fortress, keeping him out and Jack and River and the reapers in. He prayed there was a weak point - if he could find it he could cross over. And, hopefully, cross back out, sealing the gap behind them to keep the reapers from following.

 

_All right, my girl_, the Doctor thought, not daring to speak for fear it might break his concentration, _let's get them back_. The ship sent a pulse of reassurance back at him and the Doctor almost smiled.

 

The weak point revealed itself quickly - a place in the wall where a few bricks had come loose, so to speak. But then, most of the time mines had been constructed hastily in the last decades of the war, when it had come to outright battle more often than not. It was no wonder things were not as tightly woven as they should have been. The Doctor could only be grateful for it now.

 

Together, he and the TARDIS worried away at the weak point. It was exhausting work; by the time they finally punched through with a disconcerting shake of the time loop's walls, the Doctor was covered in sweat and his hands were trembling. He opened his eyes and reeled from mental overload as his physical senses reasserted themselves. He forcibly pulled himself together and threw the switch that activated a program pre-set to search for Jack's vortex manipulator. It was inert inside the time loop, but with the hole the Doctor had created, it should work well enough for the Doctor to hone in on it.

 

The view screen on the console showed an enormous expanse of blue-gray ocean below, dotted with white-capped waves. Some slice of Earth, forever isolated and looping, every being in the depths below forced to forever relive the same day until the reapers took them all.

 

Jack's vortex manipulator lay north-by-northwest. The Doctor urged the TARDIS in that direction, watching the view screen anxiously for any sign of them. For all he knew they'd landed days ago in the wide open ocean and were long since drowned - well, he supposed Jack would survive that, but drowning over and over was not a fate he'd wish upon his greatest enemy, much less his oldest friend. River, he'd already lost once, but that didn't mean her timeline was unalterable, particularly if reapers were involved.

 

A speck was growing on the horizon - a ship, big enough to hold dozens of Daleks. The Time Lords who set and baited the mouse-trap had probably shifted the whole human crew sideways in time and not much cared what happened to them in the process. Not for the first time, the Doctor wondered if there were any Daleks left alive down there, or if the reapers had killed them all.

 

He was about to find out.

 

There were two reapers circling the ship. Huge and winged and amoral. They were scavengers, and they performed a necessary service, but they were dangerous without Time Lords to control them. There were more of them crouched on the deck, ripping up the boards. The Doctor felt strangely reassured by this; if they were trying to get down into the belly of the ship, that meant there was something down there to get to. And he would bet his psychic paper he knew exactly what it was. He urged a bit more speed out of the TARDIS. This was her least favorite thing, actually flying, but she would do it for him, and for Jack and River.

 

He'd been noticed. One of the reapers circling overhead screamed and the two hunched on the deck of the ship rose up on their haunches, sniffing out the artron energy that poured off TARDIS and Time Lord both. The Doctor's plan was to lead them a merry chase, then double back for Jack and River.

 

The TARDIS passed directly over the ship. On the viewscreen, one of the reapers took to the air, screaming, but the other remained crouched on the deck. Reapers were feral, little more than hyenas with wings and a few extra senses. But then again, the Doctor supposed even hyenas might leave a few members of the pack behind to guard a certain meal, while the rest went chasing after a better one.

 

He took the TARDIS up, up, into the clouds. He vented artron energy in other directions, to confuse the reapers' primitive senses and send them reeling off in wild goose chases. The reapers would scatter themselves across the span of the time loop; he would deal with the one on the ship, and by the time the others converged again he and River and Jack would be long gone.

 

Then he came out of the clouds and realized he had a reaper bearing down on him.

 

The TARDIS dropped like a stone towards the water. The Doctor's stomach stayed up in the clouds while the rest of him dropped with her. He pulled up just in time and they skipped along the surface like a stone. He lurched away from the console and flung the door open so he'd be ready to grab his companions and get the hell out.

 

"DOCTOR!" he heard River shout, the word whipped towards him on the wind.

 

"I'm coming!" he called back, bracing himself in the doorway, trusting navigation to his ship. Jack must have noticed his reactivated wrist computer and known what it meant, because they'd come up on deck. The reaper towered over them, screaming. Jack had River shoved behind him and was somehow keeping the creature at bay using his vortex manipulator. That wouldn't last. The Doctor had seconds at most.

 

"Hey!" the Doctor shouted at the reaper, willing the TARDIS to shoot a pulse of concentrated artron energy at it, like waving a red flag at a bull. "He might be the oldest thing in this time loop, but I'm way more interesting! And tasty!"

 

The reaper screamed and leapt.

 

The TARDIS dropped. Jack shoved River towards it. The Doctor grasped hold of her and pulled her in; she landed on the floor of the TARDIS, cursing a blue streak. "That fucking bastard, I'm going to kill him - come over all twentieth century on _me_ at the last minute - Doctor! Jack -"

 

"Working on it," the Doctor said, lurching for the controls. The reaper was circling back for Jack, and now there were five other gray specks growing on the horizon. He didn't have time for another pass. But with Jack's vortex manipulator he might just have time to - yes.

 

The reaper swooped in for the kill. Jack winked out of existence.

 

And winked back, sprawled on the floor of the TARDIS.

 

"Beam me up," Jack said with a shaky, lopsided grin, and then, "Oof" as River landed on top of him.

 

"I could kill you, you complete and utter arse!"

 

The Doctor tuned them out. The reapers were in hot pursuit, and he somehow had to get the TARDIS through the hole in the time loop without letting them through as well. He gritted his teeth, already fatigued. It would have been so much easier with even one other Time Lord, but he didn't have that option.

 

The six reapers screamed in unison. If they got through to the vortex, they could go anywhere in all of space and time. He would have to hunt them down one by one -

 

The TARDIS was through. The Doctor took a deep breath and let Time itself stream through his mind to repair the hole in the time loop. He could sense that there were other places like this one where it was weak, where, given enough time, the reapers might break through - if the time mine didn't simply collapse and take a sizeable chunk of the universe with it.

 

It was done. The Doctor took a single, shaky breath; then his knees buckled and blackness closed in.

 

He came to lying on the floor of the TARDIS, his head pillowed on something warm and soft - River's thigh, he realized, looking up at her worried face. Jack was holding his hand and rubbing it gently, seeking out pressure points to relieve a migraine. Good boy, the Doctor thought muzzily, wincing at what was, indeed, a throbbing headache.

 

"Doctor?" River asked, smoothing the hair back from his forehead.

 

"Present," the Doctor managed. "I think." He winced. "Blimey, that hurt."

 

"What did you _do_?" Jack demanded.

 

"Oh, you know. Ripped a small hole in the fabric of time and space, played hide and seek with some reapers, then repaired the aforementioned hole - which is considerably harder than tearing it open to begin with. All that and I didn't even get a hug yet - oof!" he gasped as he was hit from both sides. He kissed first Jack on the cheek and then River, and then Jack, of course, insisted on snogging him senseless, which meant River had to, as well, and then she let him up for air just in time to snog _Jack_ -

 

That . . . went on a bit. The Doctor's eyebrows climbed and kept climbing, especially once they broke off and continued to lean together, forehead to forehead. He felt a little better once they pulled him in, so they were all together, breathing the same air, but it was still, well, more than a bit strange.

 

River pulled away at last, just long enough to thump Jack on the arm. "You bastard! What the hell were you thinking?"

 

"That I'm immortal," Jack told her, "and you're not."

 

"Well, do it again and I personally guarantee you'll be proving the immortality the hard way!" She was glaring at him, utterly furious, and the Doctor caught a brief psychic backwash from Jack, a strong jolt of desire, affection, and admiration. It startled and unnerved him. Mutual sexual attraction between his companions was nothing new, but a relationship?

 

He wasn't sure he liked that idea at all.

 

He cleared his throat. "If you two are quite finished," he began, and noted with both consternation and satisfaction the way they broke apart guiltily. Well, River looked guilty; Jack looked smug. "I'm afraid we can't start celebrating yet."

 

River sighed. "Of course not."

 

Jack sat up. "What's going on?"

 

The Doctor sat up as well, running a hand through his hair to try and put it to - well, he supposed it was hard to put to rights something that hadn't been in any sort of order to begin with, but there was _rakishly disheveled_ and then there was _went to bed with wet hair_. He gave up and leaned back against the console. His companions leaned with him, one to either side. The way it should be, thank you very much. "That wasn't just any old time loop. It was a time mine, set during the war. A ship like the one we landed on lured Daleks in, then sent them through the time loop, where they were eaten by reapers."

 

Jack grimaced. "We found the Daleks."

 

The Doctor frowned. "All dead?"

 

"Yeah. The reapers weren't, though it took them awhile to show up."

 

"Interesting," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "It must have been some time for them since anything had come through. They were scavenging elsewhere when you showed up."

 

"So what's the problem?" River asked. "A few reapers, a few dead Daleks - there isn't anything important trapped inside that time loop, is there?"

 

The Doctor shook his head. "No. The Time War was time-locked - nothing associated with it can be touched, not even by me. It shouldn't be there. It can't be there. I haven't had time to do the exact math, but if I don't do something to fix it, we're talking worse than Belgium here."

 

His companions blinked at him. "What the hell are you talking about?" River asked.

 

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Rips in space and time? The dissolution of, oh, probably a third of the universe? But never mind that for now, because I haven't got to the most interesting bit yet."

 

"And that would be?" Jack prompted, with a hint of impatience.

 

The Doctor pointed at him. "You."

 

"What about me?"

 

"I went nosing through the ship - the space ship, that is - while I was waiting for the TARDIS to run some tests. Specifically, I went through the crew's quarters to see if I could figure out what their mission had been. That was where I found this." He rummaged around in his pocket until he came up with the holostill of Jack and the young man. "Recognize it?"

 

Jack stared, mouth dropping open. "That's . . . me. When I was eighteen. With my best friend - we enlisted together." His mouth tightened. "I remember this holo. I lost it."

 

"During your two missing years?"

 

Jack looked up sharply. "How did you know?"

 

"Because I think I found them." The Doctor drew the data chip out his pocket. "Recognize either of these symbols?"

 

"Yeah," River said, pointing to the Seal of Rassilon. "That's on some of the doors in the TARDIS."

 

The Doctor nodded. "The other one you probably don't recognize. It translates to, 'By the order of the Council of Gallifrey.' It contains the ship's orders. I found the holo and the data chip both in the captain's cabin."

 

"So what're you saying, Doc?" Jack asked, crossing his arms over his chest and staring at the holostill. "I was captain of this ship? During the Time War?" The Doctor nodded. Jack rubbed the back of his neck. "God. Would you believe I'd almost forgotten about those two years?"

 

The Doctor shrugged. "You're what, five hundred now?"

 

"Five hundred and sixteen, not counting two thousand years I spent buried alive and mostly dead."

 

The Doctor tried not to wince. The very idea gave him the willies and the knowledge that he'd not been there to prevent it made him twitch with guilt. "Right," he said hastily. "And before you were, what, thirty-five? Two years is a lot higher percentage of thirty-five than of five hundred and sixteen."

 

"True," Jack said slowly. "And I stopped hoping to get them back a long time ago. But do you think you could?"

 

"Wait," River interjected, "what are the two of you on about?"

 

The Doctor had almost forgotten she was there, he'd been so intent on Jack. He shrugged, making an open-handed gesture to indicate Jack should tell her. It was his story, after all.

 

"Way back when I was mortal," Jack said, "I woke up one day with two years of memories missing. This was when I still worked for the Agency, and it was pretty clear they were responsible for it, but I couldn't get anyone to tell me what I'd done or why they were gone or even how they'd been removed."

 

River frowned. "That must have been . . . unnerving."

 

"It pissed me off," Jack said bluntly. "Did some stupid shit because of it. Eventually I had other things to worry about and I just . . . stopped thinking about it. Assumed I was never going to get them back." He cut his gaze away to the Doctor. "And you never offered to try."

 

The Doctor shrugged. "You never asked. I don't go digging through people's pasts - or their minds - without permission."

 

Jack and River snorted in perfect ironic unison. The Doctor blinked. This new thing between them was going to be more trouble than he'd ever imagined. "I don't!" he insisted.

 

"Anyway," Jack said, lips quirking, "you think you could find them, Doc? I paid a powerful telepath a hell of a lot of credit to try, back when it first happened. It put me in a coma for two weeks. She said it couldn't be done without killing me." He grimaced. "Not that that's a real deterrent anymore."

 

"That won't be necessary, I think," the Doctor said. "It doesn't surprise me that a normal telepath, however powerful, wasn't able to retrieve them. But I'm not a normal anything. I'm a Time Lord who fought in the Time War."

 

Jack watched him carefully. The Doctor held his gaze and tried not to blink. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" Jack said at last.

 

The Doctor swallowed. Hundreds of years it had been now, and still there were memories from that war that could leave him in a cold sweat. He wasn't looking forward to this. "Probably. But we need to try, because those memories are the key to this whole mess, I'm almost certain." He frowned. "There's a piece of the Time War floating out there, disrupting causality. I need to disable the time mine, and this might help me figure out how to do it."

 

Jack nodded, slowly. "All right."

 

The Doctor looked at River. "We're going to need your help. This sort of thing can go wrong. I'm going to be in Jack's head and Jack, of course, is going to be in Jack's head, too, and it's possible we might get stuck there, looping through the memories. Not something either of us wants. If that happens, it'll be up to you to get us out."

 

"What?" River said, eyes wide with alarm. "I have all the psychic ability of an earthworm, I can't possibly -"

 

"No, no, no, no," the Doctor said hastily. "I'll give you two syringes filled with a psychic dampener. All you have to do is deliver the injections. And then . . ." He hesitated. "And then be there. And be your wonderfully sane self."

 

She nodded. "I can do that."

 

Jack drew a deep breath. "Where should we do this?"

 

"Anywhere on the TARDIS will do. She'll be able to help," he added to River, "should anything go really wrong. But it should be somewhere we can lie down, and where you feel comfortable, Jack. Where you feel safe."

 

Jack nodded. "Your bedroom."

 

River frowned. "Are you sure? Maybe your bedroom would be better -"

 

Jack shook his head. "No. Your bedroom. When?"

 

"As soon as I take us into the Vortex. Why don't you go and get comfortable?" He nodded at River to go with him. Outwardly Jack was calm, but the Doctor knew better. Jack was scared. Truth be told, so was the Doctor. His ninth regeneration hadn't been able to control the memories, his psychic abilities having been severely weakened by the painful chasm left by his people. Things were better in this regeneration, and he'd been able to partition off the most painful memories. Every once in awhile something leaked through in a dream, but the waking flashbacks that had so plagued him before were gone. The last thing he wanted was fresh memories from the war running rampant through his head.

 

He took them into the Vortex and set them in a holding pattern, then detoured to the medlab for the psychic dampener and a few other things the Doctor hoped River wouldn't need. He carried the supplies back to his room, where he found Jack stretched out on the bed, River crosslegged beside him. His shoes and braces were in a heap on the floor.

 

The Doctor shrugged out of his suit jacket, toed off his trainers, and removed his tie. He laid four syringes out on the bedside table. "These are the psychic dampeners," he told River, indicating the two on the left. She nodded. "I'm going to hook Jack up to a neural mapper. The readings will be all over the place, but I've set it to warn you if they start repeating in a distinct pattern. That's when you want to administer the injections. Do mine first, then Jack's."

 

River nodded again. "And those?" she asked, nodding towards the other syringes.

 

"Tranquilizers. I hope they won't be necessary. Don't administer them until we've come out of it." The Doctor sat down beside Jack and covered his hand with his own. "All right. Are you ready?"

 

Jack shook his head. "No."

 

The Doctor smiled. "Me neither." He smoothed his thumb over Jack's cheekbone, then leaned down and kissed him. Jack's fingers threaded through the Doctor's hair, holding him in place and turning the kiss from a brief brush of lips to something more complex. The Doctor closed his eyes, memorizing this moment so he could hold onto it when he was inside the darkest corners of Jack's mind.

 

Jack let him go at last. He lay back. "Now I'm ready."

 

The Doctor smiled and looked at River. She met his eyes steadily, then kissed him. Then she reached for Jack and kissed him, her hand spread out over his heart. She sat up and looked from Jack to the Doctor and back again. "Be careful."

 

The Doctor nodded. Quickly, he set up the neural mapper, placing the electrodes at Jack's temples, just over the spots where his fingers would rest. "Try not to touch us," he told River. "It would be very hard for this to harm us physically, and if you touch us you could be drawn in." He lay down on his left side beside Jack, indicating that he should turn over so he faced the Doctor. His fingertips hovered over the pressure points.

 

"Jack," he whispered. "Do you trust me?"

 

There was the slightest hesitation. Jack nodded. The Doctor touched his fingers to Jack's temples.


	5. Chapter 5

Two hours passed.

 

River sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed. Jack and the Doctor seemed calm for the first fifteen minutes or so, then grew agitated, as though caught in a nightmare. Jack's breathing became rapid and ragged, and River suspected the Doctor switched to respiratory bypass at least briefly. And yet the Doctor's hands never strayed from Jack's temples.

 

The neural mapper didn't light up or beep or do anything at all. She almost wished it would. At least then there would be something she could _do_. The Doctor's instructions to her had been far from reassuring. _Just be there. And be your wonderfully sane self._ Brilliant.

 

They calmed again. Another hour crawled by. The two of them cycled through three or four periods of agitation, followed by a few minutes of relative calm. River's back started to stiffen. She stretched carefully, trying not to jostle Jack or the Doctor, and finally stood to loosen her muscles. It was then, of course, that the neural mapper started to trill, shrilly. River leapt for the bed, spent a few frustrating seconds attempting to silence the damn thing, and finally ripped out its battery. The silence left her ears ringing.

 

The Doctor had said to administer his dose of the psychic dampener first. River pressed the syringe to the crook of the Doctor's arm with shaking hands. She bit her lip, wondering if she was supposed to wait for the Doctor to come out of it before giving Jack his own dose, and if so how long that was going to take.

 

Fortunately the psychic dampener worked a lot faster than she'd feared. Less than a minute later, the Doctor jerked awake - his eyes wide, his entire body rigid, but at least he was conscious. River reached immediately for Jack's arm and administered his dose. She wedged herself between them on the bed, wrapping one arm around the Doctor's shoulders and chest and pulling Jack towards her with the other.

 

"It's all right," River said, mostly to the Doctor, since he was the only one awake. He made a strangled, wordless noise, and shook. River held on and pressed her lips to the crown of his head.

 

Jack came awake gasping, choking - _gagging_, River realized as he fell off the bed and stumbled, staggered into the bathroom. "Doctor -" she said.

 

"Go," the Doctor said, gesturing helplessly towards Jack, and River reluctantly rolled away. She grabbed a blanket off the foot of the bed and hurried into the bathroom.

 

Jack was hunched over the toilet being violently ill. His skin was gray and he was covered in sweat, shivering uncontrollably. River stared for a few seconds, frozen by feelings of utter inadequacy, before shaking herself out of it. She knelt, tucked the blanket over Jack's shoulders, and rested her hand between his shoulder blades. "It's over. Whatever happened to you before, right now you're safe."

 

Jack moaned. Then, all at once, he collapsed. River barely managed to keep his head from striking the toilet. She bent down, trying to get a look at his eyes. He was barely conscious, though he seemed to rouse a little bit just looking up at her. "Jack?" she whispered.

 

"R - River," he managed. He drew a deep, shaky breath, and turned his face away, gagging weakly. He groaned and rested his forehead on the edge of the toilet, shutting his eyes.

 

River stood and wet a flannel under cold water. Quiet, uneven footsteps made her glance up; the Doctor, looking only marginally less wrecked than Jack, leaned in the doorway.

 

"All right?" River asked. The Doctor only looked at her, eyes wide and haunted. "Right," she said, feeling ridiculous, and drew him in. She shut the door behind him, sensing they would both feel better if she narrowed their world to this small space. She made the Doctor sit down on the bathroom rug. He wedged himself into the corner made by the wall and the bathtub and wrapped his arms around himself. River wished she'd grabbed a second blanket.

 

Eventually, River managed to pry Jack's fingers from their death grip on the white porcelain and encouraged him to lie back. The Doctor's arms came up at once to cradle him, pulling him deeper and more securely into his lap; Jack gripped the Doctor's arm and turned his face into his chest as though trying to hide. River hovered awkwardly, damp flannel in one hand and discarded blanket in the other, until at last the Doctor took the flannel from her and pressed it to the back of Jack's neck. River tucked the blanket around Jack and knelt back, quite suddenly exhausted.

 

The Doctor let his head fall back to rest against the wall. He was white as milk and had dark circles under his eyes. River reached out, slowly and deliberately, and stroked his fringe out of his face. Where had they been? she wondered. Had it felt like two years to them?

 

"Thank you," the Doctor said hoarsely.

 

She shook her head. "Don't mention it." She eyed them briefly and decided it was not yet time to suggest moving. "What do you need? Another blanket?"

 

"Please. And tea. Hot, hot tea," he mumbled, eyes closing, "with free radicals and tannins."

 

River had been on the receiving end of the Doctor's lecture about the health benefits of tea too often to argue. "Right. One cup of hot tea, heavy on the free radicals, coming right up." She slipped out of the bathroom, leaving the door just barely cracked, and fetched the duvet off their bed, along with a couple of pillows. She helped them get more comfortable, placing a pillow behind the Doctor's back and arranging the duvet around them. Jack was dead weight, his eyes open but glassy, and he clung stubbornly to the Doctor. River rested a palm against his forehead. Clammy and cold. "Jack," she said softly, "do you know where you are?"

 

He nodded once, jerkily. "TARDIS," he whispered.

 

River nodded. "Will you be all right if I leave to get the tea?" she asked the Doctor.

 

"Think so," the Doctor said, leaning his head wearily against the wall.

 

She made the tea as quickly as possible, adding generous dollops of honey to Jack's and the Doctor's, and carted them back to the Doctor's room. She found them more or less in the same position, huddled on the floor, but the Doctor had at least got Jack to sit up. They leaned together, forehead to forehead, the Doctor's fingers at Jack's temples. River sat down crosslegged beside them and cleared her throat.

 

"Here you go," she said, holding the Doctor's mug out for him.

 

He turned his head without pulling away from Jack. "Cheers," he said weakly, and accepted the mug with shaking hands. He looked worse, River saw with alarm, even as Jack looked better, his eyes brighter and clearer.

 

The _idiot_. She swatted the Doctor's arm. "Are you trying to permanently damage yourself?"

 

"'M fine," the Doctor said, gulping his tea. "Just . . . put a few psychic band-aids on, is all."

 

"She's right," Jack said, slurring his words a little. He frowned at the Doctor, a weak approximation of a glare. "'M not worth it."

 

River opened her mouth, saw the Doctor's expression, and closed it. He turned his head to lean his forehead against Jack's again. "I'm so sorry," she heard the Doctor murmur, the thumb of his free hand moving slowly over the sensitive spot below Jack's ear, "if I've made you think that's true."

 

Jack stared at the Doctor, then abruptly folded in on himself. River lurched to rescue the Doctor's half-empty mug, so he could wrap both arms around Jack, whispering something River couldn't catch into his ear. She felt she was intruding, but didn't want to leave them alone with the Doctor barely holding Jack together with both hands.

 

Fortunately, whatever "psychic band-aids" the Doctor had applied seemed to have worked - the break-down was short-lived. Jack's breathing started to slow within a couple of minutes. He rested his head in the crook of the Doctor's neck, trembling but dry-eyed. River passed the Doctor his mug of tea again; he cradled it so it rested against both their chests, and Jack's eyes fluttered open. He held his hand out to River, palm-up.

 

"Want your tea yet?" she asked, taking his hand between both of hers.

 

He shook his head. "No. Think it'd come up again." He smiled weakly and tugged on her hand. "Want you, though. Please?"

 

"Of course." She took a moment to strip off her shoes and trousers, then slipped beneath the duvet beside Jack. She hooked her foot over Jack's calf, and pressed a kiss to his shoulder. The Doctor reached across Jack to grip River's hand. "Better?" River murmured.

 

Jack sighed. "Yeah." He swallowed. "Too much. Like the longest, worst day of my life was just this morning."

 

"I tried to fix that a bit," the Doctor said, brushing his fingertips against Jack's temples.

 

"Yeah. It helped. Feels more like last week now."

 

"Good." The Doctor took a deep breath. "Are you ready to talk about it?" Jack went very still. "I'm sorry. I know I'm just about the last person to encourage anyone to talk about their trauma, but we're a bit pressed for time. There's a tear in time and space and the longer we wait, the bigger it's going to get."

 

"I know," Jack said, "I just . . ." He swallowed. "If you could just give me a few days - even one or two - you and River could hash it out -"

 

The Doctor shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Jack. But I didn't see everything. And I don't remember everything I saw. It's just impressions, mostly. I need to know."

 

Jack shook his head, going white and breathless again. "Doctor, surely it can wait an hour or two," River broke in. "How long has this tear in time and space been there?"

 

The Doctor frowned. "It has no meaning in terms you would understand. In some sense it's always been there. In another sense it's only just been created. But it's there and it shouldn't be. I can't let that sort of thing go on."

 

"I know," River said, choosing to ignore the more patronizing turns of phrase, "but a couple hours surely isn't going to make a difference. Let him sleep and keep some food down at least."

 

"Please," Jack said, pulling away from him, "please, Doctor, please, I can't - can't -"

 

"Shh," the Doctor said, brushing against Jack's temples with his fingertips. Jack calmed instantly; the lines on his face smoothed out and he sighed, head dropping down to rest on River's shoulder. "A few hours," he agreed, albeit reluctantly. He smoothed a hand over Jack's hair, then rubbed slowly at the back of Jack's neck.

 

River put up with camping out on the bathroom floor for a few more minutes, but eventually it became clear that Jack was on the verge of passing out. "C'mon, you two. Bedtime."

 

"I'm fine," the Doctor said, staggering to his feet. "Things to do - probably threw the polarity extrapolator completely out of whack with all the fancy footwork earlier, and if I don't re-align the temporal compression buffers, the TARDIS energy cells will deplete."

 

River had Jack leaning heavily on one shoulder, but she spared a moment to glare at the Doctor. "You're dead on your feet. None of us wants you messing about with anything right now, the TARDIS least of all, I'd guess. Now," she added, overriding whatever protest he was about to make, "can you make it back to bed on your own?"

 

"Yes," the Doctor said sullenly. River supported Jack into the bedroom, where she sat him down on the edge of the bed and helped him change into pajamas. By the time she was done and had Jack tucked into the middle of the big bed, the Doctor had also changed and was standing beside the bed, looking a little uncertain. He'd always been the one in the middle before, River thought. At some point they needed to talk about how things had changed amongst the three of them, but not tonight. Tonight she just wanted to get the two of them tucked in so she could go to sleep herself. Her own ordeal had been comparatively light, but she'd had precious little sleep over the last few days and was at the end of her reserves.

 

The Doctor must have been as well, because in the end he lay down with remarkably little protest. Jack rolled over and burrowed into the covers, cuddling up shamelessly against the Doctor. River crawled in on the other side of Jack. She knew she'd be asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, but she stopped to watch them together, searching her mind for the ugly jealousy she'd felt towards Jack, that horrible feeling she'd been too ashamed to name. It was gone. All that remained was the unavoidable envy that they would have so long together after she was gone. She was certain they would both tell her that was no blessing. But the truth, which neither of them could see, was that she would lose them just as surely as they would lose her.

 

It was this thought that kept River awake, long after she should have followed both her men into sleep. Awake and watching them, and carefully thinking only about how beautiful they were together, Jack's dark head resting against the Doctor's lighter one.

 

***

 

Jack woke hot, confined, and constricted. He spent a few seconds holding his breath in terror, until he remembered where he was. He relaxed by increments, wary despite himself. He'd slept dreamlessly thanks to the Doctor's meddling, but now he was awake and there were _things_ in his head. He could avoid thinking about them, like not looking directly at the sun, but the echoes of them were bad enough. Sun spots that made his head ache.

 

River stirred at his back, raising her head. "Hey," she said, seeing he was awake. She rubbed the backs of her knuckles along his cheekbone. "How are you?"

 

He took a deep breath, let it out, and swallowed. His throat was dry as dirt and his mouth tasted about the same. "Thirsty."

 

"You never did drink your tea. Want me to make you some?"

 

He shook his head and pushed himself up, carefully, so as not to wake the Doctor. "I want a really tall glass of water. And I want to brush my teeth."

 

River insisted on accompanying him to the bathroom, sitting on the toilet seat while he braced himself on the sink and drank one enormous glass of water, brushed his teeth, then drank another one. He splashed some water on his face and patted it dry with a towel, feeling somewhat more human. But he was wobbly enough to be grateful for River's hand at his elbow as he made his way back to bed.

 

The Doctor was only just waking. Jack crawled in and let River tuck the duvet back around him. The Doctor rolled towards him, arm sliding around Jack's waist. River lay down and slipped her arm around Jack's shoulder. Jack took a deep breath, steeling himself for what he knew was coming.

 

Sure enough. "We really can't wait any longer," the Doctor murmured.

 

"I know," Jack sighed. He was silent, gathering himself and his thoughts. Last night, the memories had been scattershot, a violent kaleidescope Jack couldn't sort through or make sense of. But sometime in the night while he'd slept, his mind had put them in order. He drew a deep breath. "What do you need to know, Doctor?"

 

"Your deaths," the Doctor said. "Near-deaths, rather. It was as I suspected - you were captain of a time-mine ship for over a year, until you were taken prisoner in the Battle of Arcadia. You were a prisoner of war for eight months. In that time you almost died twice. Once on the ship and once in the camp."

 

"Twice in the camp," Jack corrected, staring at the ceiling.

 

"Twice then. Three times, all told. Tell me about them."

 

"You saw," Jack tried to argue, knowing it wouldn't do him any good.

 

"I did and I didn't. Jack. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. How did you survive?"

 

Jack kept his eyes trained on the Doctor's hand gripping his own. "First time. The TSC explosion. The Ryanth - allies of the Daleks - had started to board, and we were supposed to jump, but we couldn't. I was trying to fix the damn thing, thought maybe it was keeping us from jumping. I knew it was unstable, knew it was about to go, and then one of my technicians hit me over the head, knocked me right out. She wasn't with us in the Ryanth prison camp." He looked up at the Doctor. "What do you think happened to her?"

 

The Doctor sighed. "I think she fell through the portal. Arcadia caused a lot of time-space rifts, and your ship must've fallen through one of them, that's how it ended up here. But I searched most of it, and there wasn't any sign of her."

 

Reapers, then. At least it'd probably been quick. Jack swallowed, his throat painfully tight. This was ridiculous. She'd died hundreds of years ago in Jack's personal timeline. But in his mind, the events of those two years bled together and felt far more recent. By the end of his eight months as a POW, he'd been the only one of his crew left. He'd never had the chance to mourn them properly - he'd been too concerned with surviving at first, and later he'd drifted along in a sort of fugue state. He'd probably have died quickly, too apathetic to take the measures necessary for his survival, except that the camp had been liberated soon after his last crew member had died.

 

At least, he thought it must've been. That part of things was fuzzy - his last real memory of the war was of falling asleep on his piece of bare floor in the prison camp barracks; the next thing he'd known was waking up in HQ with a two year gap in his memories.

 

"So that was your first near-miss," the Doctor said. "What about the second?"

 

Jack rubbed a hand over his eyes. A headache was building at the base of his skull. "Um. In the camp. I got sick. We all did - the water was contaminated and there was no medical care. I got an infection." The sickest he'd ever been in his mortal life. It'd been worse than the 1918 flu, worse than malaria, worse even than the time Gwen and Rhys's spawn had given him chicken pox.

 

"You were dying," the Doctor said.

 

Jack shrugged. "Some of the other prisoners set up a blackmarket operation and smuggled antibiotics into the camp. They traded them for all sorts of things the rest of us couldn't afford to give up, but my crew got together and pooled their resources. We had half-doses at best, and I needed more than that. I don't think I'd have made it, except," Jack took a deep breath, "Matt - my chief medical officer - gave up his dose to me. I didn't know, of course. I was completely delirious."

 

He fell silent. The silence stretched past the breaking point, and River began tentatively, "What did -"

 

"Guess," Jack said. The tightness in his throat dissolved and hot tears flooded his eyes. He'd woken from his delirium just in time to hold the man's hand as he died. What shocked and appalled Jack later was that everyone in his crew had known. It wasn't just the act of a single, desperate man who thought he was going to die anyway, but the crew's collective decision that Jack's life was worth more than theirs. He'd railed against it when he'd found out. His first lieutenant had merely waited till he shouted himself out and said, "We need you, Captain." Jack's arguments that they needed _Matt_, he was the CMO for fuck's sake, had gone unheard and unheeded.

 

The silence this time went on for a long time. Jack was crying and unashamed of it. He'd not wept then. God, how he'd wanted to fold, crushed by the realization that if he didn't save them, it would all be in vain.

 

He hadn't saved any of them. They'd all died. And worst of all was -

 

"The third time," the Doctor said.

 

"It was a guard," Jack said. He was shaking all over, he realized dimly.

 

"Doctor, can't this wait?" River asked, desperately.

 

"No," Jack answered for him. "It was a guard," he said again, hardly daring to stop and breathe. "He was going to beat me for something - I think I wore shoes or breathed wrong. Didn't like the way I looked at him. Something. He was known for getting . . . carried away. My lieutenant . . ." Jack lost heart. Jacobson, brave, stupid Jacobson, whose first name Jack wasn't sure he'd ever known, taunting the guard until he left off beating Jack and starting beating him. And kept on beating him until some of his friends pulled him off and hauled him away, leaving Jack and Jacobson both lying in the dirt, Jacobson dying, Jack hoping he was.

 

"Doctor," River's voice said dimly, "for God's sake, do you have what you need?"

 

"Yes," the Doctor said, and Jack was suddenly aware of a syringe pressed against the inside of his arm. "Jack, this is a tranquilizer. It will make you sleep. When you wake up you'll feel better."

 

Jack was shaking so badly, he could barely nod. The Doctor injected him with the sedative and Jack closed his eyes. It acted quickly. He was a little dizzy, a little light headed, and then he was simply asleep.


	6. Chapter 6

The Doctor waited till Jack slumped against him before easing himself out of bed to commence pacing.

 

It was more or less as he'd expected. His time in Jack's head had left him with impressions and vague, elusive half-memories. He'd pieced things together using his own knowledge of the War, but it'd been up to Jack to fill in the rest.

 

The solution was clear to the Doctor now. Clear and completely unacceptable. There had to be another way.

 

He didn't realize he'd spoken aloud until River raised her head and said, "What?"

 

He shook his head. "Nothing."

 

River sat up, shifting Jack so his head rested in her lap. "No, not 'nothing.' You said, 'There has to be another way.' What did you mean?"

 

The Doctor heaved a sigh. "Think it through, River, you're clever enough for a human."

 

"I beg your pardon," River said, in a tone the Doctor was pretty sure meant she thought he should be begging hers. "There is no call whatsoever to be insulting. When someone makes a cryptic and alarming remark, it is not unreasonable to ask them for clarification, rather than jumping to erroneous conclusions."

 

The Doctor bit back a number of unhelpful replies. It wasn't her fault the answer he had staring him in the face was one he didn't like. "I know how to fix this. How to close the time loop and repair the rip in time. I just . . . don't like it. Hence, 'there must be another way.'"

 

"Ah." River raised her eyebrows at him expectantly. "Well?"

 

The Doctor grimaced. "Jack would have to die."

 

River frowned. "Not sure you've noticed, Doctor, but Jack's died before. I know you don't like it, but you've never found it unacceptable as a solution to an urgent problem."

 

"This death would be different. Possibly permanent."

 

"Right," River sighed. "Why don't we start at the beginning and move forward from there? Maybe there's something you're not seeing."

 

"There isn't. Genius, remember?"

 

River rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm 'clever enough for a human,' so let's operate on the assumption that two heads are better than one, even if one of them belongs to a stupid ape like myself. Sit, Doctor. You're making me dizzy with all that pacing." Against his better judgment, the Doctor folded himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. "Now, start at the beginning. What was so important that you had to put Jack through that?"

 

The Doctor raked a hand through his hair and tried to figure out where to start. "You have to realize, the universe isn't random. It looks like it is, but really there's a very intricate design to Time. It's not one that most people can detect, but I'm not most people. I'm a Time Lord. It's our - my - duty to see the pattern and maintain it."

 

River wrinkled her nose. "That's one thing that's always bothered me about what I know of how Time works. If Time has a design, then what about free will?"

 

The Doctor smiled fondly. "Humans and their free will. You're so attached to it compared to other cultures, you know. But you're right," he added, before River could retort. "Free will can throw a terrible monkey wrench into things if it's strong enough. Jack . . . I believe Jack should have died at Arcadia. But he didn't, because his crew was so determined that he would live."

 

River frowned. "And then . . . what? The universe tried to correct itself?"

 

"Something like that. There weren't any reapers because Time was already more wibbly-wobbly than usual. But later - yes. And each time it was foiled because of a bunch of stubborn apes' free will." It was astonishing, really. And admirable. Or would have been if the Doctor didn't suspect it would wreck Jack for a long time to come. "When the war was time-locked it stopped mattering. Time was re-designed, and Jack's fate changed. But now . . . Jack's continued existence is holding open a rip in space and time." The Doctor raked a hand through his hair. "The solution is obvious. Almost elegant. Jack dies closing the time loop - another TSC implosion would do it - and the rip is mended. The instability ends."

 

River nodded. "But?"

 

The Doctor sighed. "But . . . an implosion of that nature is highly unpredictable. Jack would end up scattered through time and space - a few atoms of him here, a few more there. They could be eons apart, or light years. They'd never come together again. He'd never come back. Hence, 'there has to be another way.'"

 

"There isn't," Jack said flatly.

 

The Doctor and River startled. Jack's eyes were open, looking at the Doctor. "How long have you been awake?" the Doctor demanded.

 

"Long enough. Sedatives don't work so well on me." Jack pushed himself up onto his elbow. "There isn't another way, Doc. You know that."

 

"There must be," the Doctor said stubbornly.

 

"There isn't," Jack replied, "and I'd rather we not waste time pretending there is. So I'll die permanently. Maybe it's time I did. You said it yourself once, Doc. I'm wrong. I shouldn't be here. And now we know that's more true than ever."

 

The Doctor shook his head. "The timeline's been rewritten, Jack. You can't just give up now, it'd change everything."

 

"_Also_," River added with a glare at the Doctor, "we love you and don't want to lose you."

 

The Doctor flinched. "Yes," he said, reaching to grasp Jack's free hand, "of course, yes, that too." He swallowed painfully. "Don't you want to live, Jack?"

 

Jack's eyes were suddenly a little wet. "I want to be with you," he said, bleakly. "I want to be the one you can't lose. But I'm tired. I don't want to keep losing everyone and everything. Even you, eventually." He curled his fingers around the back of the Doctor's head and into his hair. "I'm not afraid."

 

The Doctor shook his head stubbornly. "But - no. Jack, I swear, I'll find another way."

 

Jack sighed. "Think of something fast, then. Because we both know we're running out of time."

 

_Think of something fast._ The Doctor hoped that meant Jack truly didn't want to die, but was simply exhausted, grieving, and overwhelmed, in need of a nice, long holiday someplace warm where they served banana daiquiris. Which the Doctor would be happy to provide, soon as he figured out how to keep Jack from getting himself blown to bits and spread out over the whole of time and space.

 

He left the humans curled up in the bed and went to the console room. He sat in the jumpseat and stared at the time rotor, moving up and down lazily as they floated in the vortex. Between himself and the TARDIS, there had to be a solution.

 

_Think of something fast._

 

***

 

Jack wasn't sleeping. River was fairly sure of it, though he lay in her arms with his eyes closed. His breathing was too shallow for sleep, his limbs too still. "Jack," she murmured, ducking her head to nuzzle his ear.

 

He sighed and opened his eyes. "Not fooling you, am I."

 

"Nope," she said, wrapping her arms around him more firmly. "You didn't twitch."

 

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Twitch?"

 

"You twitch as you're falling asleep."

 

"I'll have to keep that in mind." He stretched carefully. "I'm so tired."

 

She stroked his hair. "Sleep a bit, then."

 

"Not that sort of tired. And no," he added, fixing her with a glare, "you're not allowed to ask me if I want to die, or why I want to die, or anything else related to me wanting to die or not wanting to die. I've made this choice before, more times than I can count. This isn't any different, just because it might be permanent. Got it?"

 

"Agreed," River said, continuing to stroke Jack's hair. She pressed her lips to Jack's forehead, wondering if she should offer sex. But they were wrapped around each other intimately, her leg pressed between his, and he wasn't the least bit aroused. She could probably take care of that with a kiss here, a bite there, but the question was whether Jack would want her to. She couldn't tell what he was thinking; he seemed a different man from the one who had seduced her on the deck of a ship.

 

"It's so strange," Jack said at last. "To know it started before I was immortal. Before I'd even met the Doctor."

 

"What started?"

 

"People leaving me. Seems like that's always been my lot in life." He looked up at her, his eyes very dark and very old. Jack did not often look his age the way the Doctor sometimes did, but when he was sad it was possible to see all his old griefs reflected in his eyes. So many of them. She knew their names, some of them, old friends and lovers, and thought that she'd count herself honored to join their ranks someday.

 

"We all get left, Jack. I swear, sometimes, you and the Doctor -" River bit her tongue to prevent any number of unfortunate ends to that sentence. "My father died when I was fifteen," she said at last, more temperately. "He was everything I had in the world. So don't think that you immortal-types are the only ones who get left behind."

 

Jack frowned. "It's different for me. I'm sorry, but it is - different even from how it is for the Doctor. He had his people for most of his life, and for years now he's had me. It's possible that without his people he'll have more than twelve regenerations, but we won't know for sure until it happens, and it's equally possible he won't. And when he dies, I'll be alone again. Forever. Till the end of the universe." Jack swallowed, and River was shocked to realize he'd started shaking. "I've seen the end of the universe, River. It's dark and it's cold and I don't want to be there alone."

 

"Shh, shh." She held him more firmly, trying to still his trembling. "You heard the Doctor. He's been with you when you die. You won't live forever."

 

"He might just be saying that," Jack said dully.

 

River stared. For him to think the Doctor might lie to him about something so vital - it astonished her. The Doctor had his secrets, but so did they all, and the idea that he might lie to her outright about something like that simply would never occur to her. Perhaps, River thought sadly, Jack's trust in the Doctor had simply been broken too many times, in too many fundamental ways, for it to ever be truly repaired.

 

"He wouldn't do that to you," she said at last, firmly.

 

Jack shook his head, sad and unconvinced. "I hope that's true."

 

"I wouldn't," the Doctor said, startling them both. He stepped into the library, hands held out. "Blimey, Jack, of course I wouldn't. How could you think so little of me?"

 

Jack said nothing. The silence was heavy and uncomfortable. River held her breath while the silence thickened, deepened, and finally, at long last, was broken by the Doctor.

 

"I found a way." The Doctor paused, and when Jack said nothing, went on doggedly. "You still have to die in order for Time to repair itself, and a TSC explosion would, er -"

 

Jack raised a sardonic eyebrow. "Kill two birds with one stone?"

 

River could tell from the Doctor's grimace that that was, indeed, what he'd been thinking. "Er. Quite. But," he added hastily, "I believe there's a way for the TARDIS to make a sort of, of," the Doctor waved his hands, "a temporal net. To catch all the bits of Jack, right down to the atomic level, and keep them in one place and time so they can come back together again."

 

"Sounds like that could take awhile."

 

"Might do. The TARDIS will help." The Doctor stepped closer, a little tentative. "If it makes a difference . . . I don't think any of it will hurt."

 

Jack shot him a look. "Not my first rodeo, Doc."

 

The Doctor cleared his throat. "No. No, of course not. Well, it is up to you. It's - well, it's not a sure thing. I've never done anything like this before, and neither has the TARDIS. We've got the theory down, but the practical . . . and," he paused, swallowing, "and if you'd rather I didn't do it, I - I won't argue."

 

Jack lifted his chin, meeting the Doctor's eyes for the first time. "And the timeline?"

 

"I'll deal with it. Somehow. If you'd rather die for good, I won't stand in your way."

 

Jack said nothing for a full minute. River held her breath, watching them both. "All right. Do the temporal net," he said at last.

 

The Doctor let out a long breath of sheer relief. So did River, but she couldn't bring herself to match the Doctor's sudden, blinding smile. She wanted to throw her arms around Jack, but the stubborn set of his jaw prevented her.

 

"Good!" the Doctor said. "Fantastic, even!" He made an move towards Jack, then seemed to think better of it. He backed up, nodding. "Splendid, wonderful -"

 

"Yeah, all those things," Jack said impatiently. "But time's a-wasting, Doctor."

 

"Right, yes! Allons-y!" The Doctor spun on his heel and went charging out of the bedroom.

 

Neither Jack nor River said anything. River reached out and grasped his hand. He didn't squeeze back, just lay there, looking lost and tired. Anything River might have said stuck in her throat. They were sending Jack off to die. The deliberateness of it was horrible, even if the Doctor had worked out a way to save him. More horrible still was River's certainty that at least part of Jack was wishing he could take it back and tell the Doctor to just let him go.

 

"He thinks death is the worst that can happen," Jack said at last. "He always has. I couldn't . . ." He sighed. "I couldn't make him kill me. He'd see it that way, of course," he added with a wry, humorless quirk of his lips.

 

River nodded. Together they got up and silently dressed. She let him lead the way to the console room, where they found the Doctor racing about, just as he had that night, days ago now, when they'd first landed on Jack's abandoned ship.

 

He gave the console one last great thump with the mallet and whipped around to face them. "Right then! The implosion -"

 

"I know what to do," Jack said shortly.

 

The Doctor snapped his mouth shut and nodded. Abruptly, he stepped forward and folded Jack into a hard hug. Jack froze, then hugged him back, just as hard. River glanced away to give them some privacy, but she still heard the Doctor murmur, "It'll be okay. I'm going to make it be okay. Trust me?"

 

River thought she could hear Jack swallow. "Yes," he said clearly.

 

"Good," the Doctor said.

 

Jack's hand landed on River's shoulder, then dropped to pick up her hand. "Hey."

 

She turned and gave in to the impulse she'd suppressed earlier, to throw her arms around him and hug him tight. She thought of all the things she might say - _please come back to us, be careful, thank you_ \- and decided instead to say exactly what she was thinking. "I love you."

 

"Love you, too," he said, his lips in her hair. "And I want to say . . . I'm glad you and I had our chance."

 

Her throat felt very tight. "Me too," she managed, only a little choked. "And I'll be here with the Doctor, waiting for you."

 

He smiled sadly. "Might take years. Maybe decades. I don't want you to waste your life waiting for me. So I just wanted you to know," he drew a deep breath, "that even after everything, I'm still glad."

 

He turned back to the Doctor, who threw the lever to rematerialize the TARDIS on the ship. The ride was a rocky one; River stumbled over to a support strut and clung to it, struggling to keep both feet on the bucking TARDIS floor. By some miracle, no one ended up on the ground when the ship gave one final, distinctly unhappy wrench and settled.

 

"We're here," the Doctor said into the sudden silence. "About five minutes after I left. Based on the readings I'm getting now, things have got a lot more unstable. It won't take much for it to go."

 

Jack nodded. "Got it. Well, then." He looked from River to the Doctor and back again. "See you in hell."

 

The Doctor waited until the door had swung shut behind Jack, then leapt for the controls. "I need you to stay very quiet," he told River, without looking at her. He was watching a view screen intently. Peering over the Doctor's shoulder, River saw that it showed Jack, walking along a corridor. "It'll take a lot of concentration to pull off this off, it's important that there aren't any distractions. And I might, er, pass out afterward. Just a bit. Don't worry if I do - just go to the medlab and see if it worked. I've set up a rejuvenation tank, the TARDIS should put Jack in there - well, not Jack, not really, but all the little particles that make him up. You probably won't be able to see anything, but the readings on the machine'll tell you if he's in there."

 

"And if he's not?" River asked quietly.

 

The Doctor did look at her then, his shoulders slumping a little. "Then there's nothing left to do but wait for me to come round."

 

River stayed well back while the Doctor did what he had to do. He seemed to be deep in conversation with the TARDIS, and if she wasn't mistaken he'd switched to respiratory bypass. After awhile, she hitched herself onto the jumpseat, gripping it with a hand on either side of her legs. Jack had long since disappeared from view, but he must have reached the TSC by now. She held her breath, even though she knew that nothing could physically hurt the TARDIS, that the entire ship could blow up and they wouldn't even feel it.

 

She was wrong.

 

The view screen went white - brilliant, dazzling white - and a wind swept through the TARDIS. At least, that was the only word River had for the sensation. It was a rushing in her ears and against her skin; she had a sudden, dizzying glimpse of swirling cosmos, of the terrifyingly silent explosion that was the birth of everything, and, simultaneously, of the equally silent, equally terrifying folding-in that signaled life's end. Mind reeling under the onslaught, she knew without a doubt that this was what it was to be a Time Lord. To hold all of this in one's head at once.

 

No wonder the Doctor was half-mad.

 

To River's intense relief, the sensation passed through her in a few seconds. It took her longer realize she'd slid off the jumpseat, and that she and Doctor both lay crumpled on the grating. She crawled to the Doctor to feel for his double pulse. Both hearts were beating, steady and strong. She let out a breath of relief and pulled herself up on the console. Her legs shook, but she forced herself to move quickly, hoping the TARDIS had brought the medlab as close to the console room as possible.

 

She had. It was where River and the Doctor's bedroom usually was, just a few feet down the corridor. River stumbled through the door and scanned frantically for a rejuvenation tank - there it was, a tank of bubbling blue liquid in the far corner of the medlab.

 

She couldn't see the readouts from here. A few more steps - River hung onto the counter, praying as she hadn't since she was a girl. _Please, Jack. Please, please, please._

 

She stopped dead, disbelieving.

 

The monitors were dark. No sign of life.

 

Jack was gone.


	7. Chapter 7

_The Doctor was right - there was no pain. Jack had a moment to brace himself and then he was simply gone, enveloped in the white light of the TSC as it imploded. He did not feel himself rent asunder, he was simply no longer there; instead he was nowhere and everywhere and all the places in between._

 

He knew this place. He'd been here before, thousands of times. With each death he caught a glimpse, felt the echoing warmth of the bright light that embraced all souls but his. It was close enough to touch, and yet its comfort was denied him.

 

But not this time.

 

It coalesced, taking form. A head and arms. Legs. A slim torso and blonde hair.

 

Rose.

 

No,_ it said._ Not Rose. Bad Wolf. Hello, Jack._ It reached out to cup his face and Jack smelled-saw-touched-tasted-heard a million echoes all at once. Stars dying and being born. The rise and fall of great civilizations. Life cycling into death and back to life, over and over and over._

 

It was deeply frightening, but beyond the terror he sensed something else. Something . . . beautiful. Good. Pure.

 

Do you want it?_ Bad Wolf asked him._ This is your time to choose. You will not pass this way again for a very long time. And when you do, there will be no choice.

 

_He wanted it. His one chance, Bad Wolf said. He ached for it. So much life awaited him, if he turned away._

 

He was not sure he had the strength for it.

 

You do, _Bad Wolf said._ You are a favored Child of Time. And unto Time's favorite children are given the greatest gifts, and the greatest tests. You have but one chance to refuse the test, and the gift.

 

_A gift, she said. And all along Jack had thought himself punished._

 

No, child, _she said._Never. You will not be left alone and desolate at the end. Do not fear that.

 

_A weight lifted. And just like that, Jack knew. He wasn't ready yet._

 

Bad Wolf said nothing, but he felt her pleasure. She embraced him; he had no body here and could not weep, but he would have, were it possible. Someday he might regret he had not chosen the light, but he thought of the Doctor, whom Jack had loved for so very long, and he thought of River, with whom he had only just begun, and he could not be sorry. Not in the least.

 

Bad Wolf kissed him once on the forehead, a benediction. It burned, like the rush of life back into his body.

 

***

 

The Doctor's head was splitting.

 

He rolled over, groaning, lucid enough to be grateful he wasn't still lying on grating. Someone had moved him away from the console; he was covered with a blanket from the medlab and his head, he realized, blinking his eyes open, lay once more on River's thigh.

 

"Welcome back," she said, smoothing her hand over his forehead, brushing his hair back from his eyes. "How're you feeling?"

 

He didn't feel up to pretense. "I hope you got the number of that bus," he said, closing his eyes again.

 

"What?"

 

He waved a hand. "Nothing. Feel like hell. Only to be expected since I just . . ." He fell silent, frowning as he extended his time sense, searching for the rip. "Oh," he said in relief, letting his head fall back. "No more rip. Which is good, because I really didn't have any Plan B and we couldn't exactly try Plan A a second time - oh God, River, did you - is Jack - what . . ." The Doctor trailed off as he got his first good look at River. Her eyes were reddened, her face pale. "It didn't work," he whispered.

 

She shook her head, mouth thinning. "I sat in the medlab for an hour, I kept hoping -" She gulped air. "But there was nothing. I'm sorry, Doctor."

 

The Doctor couldn't answer. His throat was too tight. _Jack. Oh Jack. Jack, I'm so sorry. I hope you knew . . . _

 

River was crying now. The Doctor sat up and gathered her up to hold close. He buried his face in her hair and reached out to the TARDIS. She would be grieving, too. They had failed Jack, both of them. He braced himself for a song of deep sorrow, such as she had sung for years after the end of the war, when all her kind and his had burned and they were too deeply shocked by the loss to do anything but grieve. He had heard it only occasionally since, with the passing of someone particularly dear, but he was sure she would sing it for Jack.

 

He did not hear it after all. The TARDIS was quiet, preoccupied, but not grieving. The Doctor sat up, shifting River in his arms. He frowned, trying to get his ship's attention. At last he felt her, a little impatient, as though she had somewhere else to be. She dropped an image into his mind that sent him reeling. "Ohh," he breathed. And then, glaring, "That wasn't the plan!"

 

"Doctor?"

 

"Sorry. Sorry. Jack isn't dead."

 

"What?" River sat up, glaring at him. "That's not funny!"

 

"It wasn't supposed to be. I promise," he added, when she stared. "He's alive. The TARDIS just didn't do as we'd planned. C'mon, help me up, I want to be there when he wakes."

 

"But," River said, helping him to his feet, "Jack said it could be years."

 

"The TARDIS sped things along a bit. I think. I'm not entirely sure what happened, to be honest, but she seems to have it in hand. Jack's alive. Or will be, anyway, and that's all that matters. Grab that blanket, he's always freezing when he wakes up from being dead."

 

River obediently grabbed the blanket, though the Doctor could tell she didn't half believe him. It was a short trip; the medbay was the closest room, but just beyond it was the one he was looking for. He'd not been inside since his eighth regeneration, when the TARDIS had sent him there to save his life. It'd been decades before he'd stopped resenting the TARDIS for that, but it was long since water under the bridge.

 

"What's this?" River asked, frowning at the door.

 

"It's called the Zero Room. It's where I go if I'm very ill or hurt or have a difficult regeneration. Nothing has any influence here except the TARDIS." He pressed his palm against the door so it slid open. "She did her job perfectly," he said, silently apologizing to his ship for his sharpness. "Jack - for reasons I'm not entirely sure I understand - didn't need the rejuvenation tank. He needed this."

 

He made River shut the door behind them. The soothing presence of the TARDIS was strong here. The Doctor closed his eyes briefly, basking in it. He'd avoided this room in his ninth incarnation, and since regenerating there'd been no need. Not until now, when the need wasn't his, but Jack's.

 

Jack lay on his back in the middle of the room, naked and glowing softly with residual vortex energy. The Doctor reached out to stop River from going to him. He was not entirely sure that Jack's immortality would not be catching in this state. "We have to wait until he stops glowing."

 

"How long will that be?"

 

The Doctor paused, listening to the TARDIS. "Not long. Well. I say 'not long,' but it could be awhile. A few hours."

 

River squeezed the Doctor's hand. "Let's sit down then." She slid down the wall to sit on the floor. The Doctor sat beside her and didn't protest when she tugged him down to lie with his head in her lap. "You look tired," she remarked, fingers stroking through his hair.

 

"Been a long few days. Almost lost you both a half dozen times over." He smiled weakly up at her. She pressed the pad of her thumb to the Doctor's lips in lieu of a kiss. He bit it softly, then yawned. "Mind if I sleep a little? Being in here always makes me want a nap." He never knew if that was because the Zero Room actually inducing drowsiness, or just that he'd spent so much time in here asleep that his mind/body had linked the two things, even without a true causal relationship.

 

He woke to River's hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently. He took a moment to orient himself, then twisted round to look. Jack had stopped glowing. "When?"

 

"Just now," River said. "How long -"

 

"Soon." It seemed silly to get up and walk the few feet that separated them. The Doctor crawled instead, the medlab blanket bunched up under one arm. He tucked it around Jack, then slid in beside him. He could sense the vortex energy, could feel it readying itself for that moment when something indefinable shifted and Jack was suddenly no longer dead and cold in the Doctor's arms, but alive and - well, still pretty damn cold. A body didn't go from room temp to thirty-seven Centigrade in a matter of a few seconds.

 

River sat down crosslegged beside them. She helped the Doctor arrange the blanket around Jack's bare shoulders, but avoided touching his skin. "Sorry," she said, when the Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. "He's just so . . . dead."

 

"Not for much longer," Doctor said. "In fact, unless I miss my guess -"

 

Jack jerked suddenly, drawing that first, agonized breath. The Doctor grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together. "It's all right," he said, and immediately the disorientated panic in Jack's eyes lessened. A tightness in the Doctor's own chest eased with it.

 

The first moment of life didn't lie. He said, _It's all right_ and Jack trusted him.

 

"God," Jack managed through chattering teeth, "this one hurts."

 

"Where?" River asked, sliding in on Jack's other side.

 

Jack squeezed his eyes shut. "Everywhere. Nowhere. Dunno." He drew a shaky breath. "Did it work, Doc?"

 

The Doctor blinked. "You're alive, aren't you?"

 

"Not me, the tear in space and time! Is it gone?"

 

"Oh. Yes. All gone."

 

"Good. Hate to have done that for nothing." Jack closed his eyes and sagged back. The Doctor and River exchanged a glance, and by mutual, silent consent, each shifted closer to Jack.

 

"Should we move him to a bed?" River whispered, frowning.

 

The Doctor shook his head. "I think he needs a couple more hours here. Floor's not so bad, really."

 

"Not bad t'all," Jack mumbled. He tightened his grip on the Doctor's hand and forced his eyes open. "You'll be here when I wake up?" His gaze shifted to River. "Both of you?"

 

"Of course," the Doctor said, kissing Jack on the temple. He smelled of life and death and deep time, a smell the Doctor had thought he'd never experience again after the destruction of Gallifrey. He didn't know what had happened and suspected he never would, but the truth was that he didn't care. Whatever it was, it had brought Jack back to him, safe and sound and whole. "Fish and chips as soon as you're able."

 

Eyes closed, Jack smiled.

 

***

 

Jack woke once, when the Doctor lifted him in his arms. His head lolled on the Doctor's shoulder. He let himself drift, just below true consciousness, warm and safe and delightfully, wonderfully _alive_, before slipping back to sleep.

 

When he woke again, he was in bed, sandwiched between the Doctor and River, who were speaking in hushed tones over his head. He stretched carefully and their conversation stopped. "Jack!" the Doctor said, sounding relieved, and kissed him despite what felt like the world's worst case of morning breath. As soon as he was done, River was there, and then they just held onto him as though they were afraid he might slip away from them again.

 

This was the moment he had to remember, Jack knew. Someday, when he inevitably regretted his decision to live, he had to remember that this, and all the moments like it still to come, were were worth it.

 

"How are you feeling?" River asked, voice muffled against the crown of Jack's head.

 

Jack considered his answer carefully. "Achy. Starving. Unbelievably thirsty."

 

"Fish and chips?" the Doctor suggested.

 

Jack grimaced. "Maybe not yet. Think I'd better start with toast and see how that goes."

 

"Toast we can do," River said, and threw back the covers on her side of the bed. "I'll go take care of that." She paused. "Might take me awhile."

 

Jack rolled his eyes at her retreating back. "Subtle," he remarked.

 

"Hmm," the Doctor said, nuzzling Jack's neck. "I'm sure she'd say something like, 'Subtle doesn't work on you two.'"

 

"Possibly," Jack agreed. He sat up, running a tongue around the inside of his mouth. Disgusting. He was sweaty, too, from the hours spent pressed between the two of them. He wanted to shower, brush his teeth, and drink as much water as was humanly possible in a single sitting. "Give me a couple minutes, Doc. I'll be right back."

 

To Jack's relief, the Doctor didn't suggest he join him or try to follow him into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth until they ached and drank two enormous glasses of water, then turned the shower on as hot as he could stand. It felt good, the stinging almost-pain of the water against his skin. He stood directly under it, so the water ran in rivulets down his face and the back of his neck, and took stock.

 

The memories were still there, but distant, faded, as worn-out as the shock of discovering they were gone. They would not trouble him more than any other incident from his past. He wondered if that had been a parting gift from Bad Wolf, or if that would have happened with his next death no matter what. In the end, he supposed it didn't matter.

 

The Doctor was sitting up in bed, waiting for him when he got back. He welcomed Jack with a tight hug and a kiss, and let Jack settle himself against his body, head resting over his second heart. Jack relaxed, hoping he might doze a little like this while they waited for River. But there was a peculiar tension running through the Doctor. When it didn't dissipate after a minute or two, he lifted his head. "Doc, what's wrong?"

 

The Doctor drew a deep, shaky breath. "I need to tell you a story," he said, his voice hoarse. "And it's going to be hard for me, which is why you've never heard it before."

 

Jack moved to sit up, but the Doctor's arms tightened. "What?"

 

"I need to tell you . . ." The Doctor swallowed. "I need to tell you how I met River." Jack frowned, about to remind the Doctor that he'd been there, but something stopped him. He stayed quiet and listened to a story about a Library, where the books were haunted by shadows and everyone was saved but no one survived. Including River. "She told me I must have known," he finished. "That I showed up on her doorstep with a new suit and a haircut and I took her to see the Singing Towers. And I cried, because I knew." He managed a hitching breath. "That's why, Jack. That's why, when we met her . . ."

 

"Yeah," Jack said, too stunned to be more intelligent. He stroked his fingers through the Doctor's hair, felt each soft strand slip through his fingers.

 

"I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner, I just -"

 

"Didn't want to think about it," Jack finished. The Doctor nodded, his face pinched and pale. "It's okay," he said, moving his thumb softly over the inside of the Doctor's wrist, feeling the double beat against the single beat in his thumb. "But thank you for telling me. And promise me something." The Doctor nodded. "When it happens - when it's time for her to go - if I'm not with you, come find me. Don't go through it alone. Promise me," he added, when the Doctor looked uncertain.

 

"I promise," the Doctor said.

 

"Besides," Jack added, settling back against the pillows and pulling the Doctor with him, "you only know what you did. You don't know what you're going to do. Maybe your next self will be clever enough to know how to really save her."

 

The Doctor sighed. "It doesn't work like that."

 

"Well, maybe you'll just be older and wiser, then. Or between us, we might figure something out." The Doctor nodded, swallowed painfully, and dipped his head to kiss Jack.

 

Jack melted, going boneless between the Doctor and the mattress, and kissed back, slow and tender, until something shifted and it became less about shared future grief and more about the two of them, alive and in bed after an adventure. They kissed until Jack was breathless and had to come up for air, gasping into the Doctor's neck. The Doctor kissed the dip in the center of his collarbone and rubbed his body along Jack's, languid as a cat. "Maybe we should wait for River?" Jack suggested, glad his voice didn't squeak.

 

"Sure," the Doctor said, even as his clever fingers did things that made Jack squirm. They fell to unhurried caresses, wrapped in the safe, protective warmth of the duvet, playing each other's bodies as surely as a master musician played his instrument.

 

"I missed this," Jack said, a little shakily. He skimmed his hand down the Doctor's back and lingered, rubbing lightly at the dip just above the curve of his arse. "So much."

 

"I'm sorry, Jack," the Doctor murmured. He nuzzled Jack's chest, lips catching on Jack's nipple. Jack shivered. The Doctor looked up. "I'm so sorry."

 

"I know." In lieu of anything else he might have said, he reached for the Doctor's cock. The Doctor sucked in a breath and expelled it in a moan when Jack stroked him once, root to tip, and swirled his thumb around the head. He did a trick with his wrist and his thumb and the Doctor shuddered, mouth falling open in a silent oh. "Feel good?" Jack asked. Hardly necessary, but he liked watching the Doctor try to focus his eyes and find coherence enough to answer. Even better were times like now, when the Doctor couldn't manage a response at all, just a vague, shaky nod. Jack's own arousal deepened and he rocked against the Doctor's hip, wishing he had better leverage. There was plenty of heat and pressure but no real friction.

 

"Here," the Doctor managed, falling to one side with a fraction of his usual easy grace. He curled his fingers around Jack's erection. Jack groaned in relief and set the pace for both of them, hooking a leg over the Doctor's calf, hitching him closer. He held the Doctor's cock in one hand, and with the other he pulled the Doctor's head down for a kiss. Here with the Doctor, this was _home_.

 

A noise from the doorway startled them both. "Sorry," River said, face flushed and plate of toast incongruously in hand. "Don't mind me."

 

"Enjoying the view?" Jack asked with a grin.

 

"Always," she replied with a smile. "Not that there is much of one, with all those blankets in the way." She sauntered over, hips swaying. "Room for one more on that bed?"

 

It was, Jack realized, a genuine question disguised as flirtation. He glanced toward the Doctor, who watched him in turn. _Say the word_, the Doctor's eyes said. It was his choice, whether he wanted to limit this to himself and the Doctor.

 

A few days ago, he'd have shut River out or let her in only reluctantly. Now . . . "Absolutely," Jack said, holding a hand out to River. A wide grin lit her face. She set the plate of toast aside on a bedside table and dropped her dressing gown to the floor. She tumbled into bed and kissed first Jack, then the Doctor. Jack started working his way down her body, letting his hand proceed him to dip between her legs. She was already wet. Jack wondered how long she'd been watching them.

 

"Oh no," she said then, to his surprise, and pushed him over so he lay on his back. "It's your turn."

 

Jack started to protest, then thought better of it. If this was what they wanted - and the Doctor was nodding his agreement even as he plucked at the covers to locate the lube - who was he to argue?

 

River turned him onto his side with a few deft touches and kissed him deeply. Jack heard the pop of the cap on the lube. A flutter of anticipation ran through him, but he forced himself to focus on River. He caressed her breasts, the graceful arch of her hips, and finally between her legs again. This time, she smiled and let him.

 

The Doctor slipped a finger into him, then two, fairly quickly. He found Jack's prostate with the ease of long practice and Jack froze. He groaned, head resting against River's shoulder. "Seeing your face when he does that," River said, amused and thoughtful, "it makes me wish I could know what it feels like."

 

"Bloody amazing," Jack mumbled. The Doctor added a third finger and he moaned. "Oh God." It had been a long time since he and the Doctor had done this. He shifted, pushing down on the Doctor's fingers. His hands tightened on River's shoulders. She smoothed a hand down the back of his head, ruffling the hair at the nape of his neck.

 

"You two . . ." the Doctor said, and stopped. "What happened on that ship, anyway?"

 

Jack chuckled, though it changed quickly to a broken-off groan when the Doctor pushed his fingers deeper. "Team-building activities," he managed, pleased with his own coherence.

 

"Quite," River agreed, a little breathlessly. Jack's hand had taken up where it'd left off. "You have no idea what you're in for, Doctor." She laughed, and Jack could hear a slightly evil smile in her voice when she added, "We are going to have such fun . . ."

 

"Mmm," Jack agreed, brain going fuzzy as the Doctor's fingers massaged him _just so_. He looked to River for permission and she nodded, bringing one knee up. He braced himself and pressed forward, sinking easily into her, then held very still while the Doctor slowly breached his body. His cock twitched inside River and she fluttered around him. He was shaking a little. To his relief, neither of his partners began moving immediately; they held him, reaching across his body to clasp hands with each other, forming a tight knot with Jack in the middle. The Doctor brushed a kiss across the back of his neck. Jack took a deep breath. "Okay," he said.

 

None of them could move very well in this position, but they managed a subtle rocking motion. Jack felt both his partners relax into it with him; River's eyes were open, watching, and Jack covered the Doctor's hand on his hip with his own. The Doctor was home, but this could be, too. Better, even, than Jack had ever imagined he deserved.

 

Jack's orgasm built slowly from the base of his spine, upwards and outwards. River came first, tipped over by the swirl of Jack's thumb around her clit. The ripple of muscles around Jack's cock sent him spiraling higher. There was a pause, interminably long, while River gently disengaged herself, and then Jack pulled himself up on his hands and knees to give the Doctor the leverage they both craved. He pushed back and the Doctor thrust harder. "More," Jack gasped. River snaked her hand in between Jack and the bed and stroked him twice, and that was all it took. Jack came with a long, relieved groan, and the Doctor followed seconds later.

 

Jack didn't know how long the three of them lay slack-limbed on the bed, tangled up together in a heap of legs and arms. Long enough for the afterglow to fade into plain old sleepiness. A nap sounded brilliant - but then his stomach growled. Audibly.

 

To his left, River broke up laughing. "Hungry?"

 

"Apparently," Jack said ruefully.

 

"There's toast," River said, nodding at the bedside table. "It's rather cold and congealed, though."

 

"Hmm, think I'll pass."

 

The Doctor hooked his chin over Jack's shoulder. "I did promise you fish and chips."

 

River made a face. "Do you have any idea what's in that stuff?"

 

"Nope," Jack said, at the same time the Doctor said, "Yep."

 

River rolled her eyes. "I don't know which is worse, honestly. All right, come on. We have to shower before we're fit to go out."

 

Neither he nor the Doctor moved. River laughed and rolled out of bed. "Join me when you're ready." She paused to kiss Jack and run a hand through his hair before disappearing into the bathroom.

 

The Doctor tightened his grip on Jack, pulling him more firmly up against his body. "I never thanked you," he said.

 

Jack twisted round to frown at him. "For what?"

 

"For choosing me - us," he corrected, with alacrity. "It can't have been easy."

 

"It wasn't," Jack said thoughtfully, "and then . . . it was. I can't explain it." Nor did he really want to try. It wasn't the sort of thing he thought he wanted to share, not even with the Doctor, who might actually understand.

 

"Well," the Doctor said, and stopped. He looked down at Jack, eyes dark and intent. "I'm so very glad you did."

 

"Yeah," Jack said, and let his head fall back against his pillow. He closed his eyes, feeling the cool press of the Doctor's body against his, the warmth of the blankets, the soothing hum of the TARDIS, and the quiet, domestic pleasure of knowing River was in the next room. "Me, too."

 

_Fin._


End file.
